Typological Changes in the Lexicon: Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation 9783110238211, 9783110238204

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Typological Changes in the Lexicon

Topics in English Linguistics 72

Editors

Bernd Kortmann Elizabeth Closs Traugott

De Gruyter Mouton

Typological Changes in the Lexicon Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation

by

Alexander Haselow

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-023820-4 e-ISBN 978-3-11-023821-1 ISSN 1434-3452 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haselow, Alexander. Typological changes in the lexicon : analytic tendencies in English noun formation / by Alexander Haselow. p. cm. ⫺ (Topics in English linguistics ; 72) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-023820-4 (alk. paper) 1. English language ⫺ Noun. I. Title. PE1205.H33 2011 4251.54⫺dc22 2010039846

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin/New York Cover image: Brian Stablyk/Photographer’s Choice RF/Getty Images Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements

For the past three years I have been thinking about change: Why do languages change, why do people change their speech behavior, their attitudes, their style, why does society as a whole undergo continuous change? My impression is that least of the changes in people's behavior occur abruptly: change implies continuity of a certain kind, and usually people keep to a set routine since a fixed way of doing things produces orderliness and the feeling of security. However, we keep including new ideas and ways of expressing ourselves into our lifes as much as we keep getting rid of older behavioral patterns, attitudes etc. The present study deals with language change, a change that occurs when speakers (subconsciously) introduce more or less random variation and, over time, sort out preferred variants which finally win out. If such changes, which occur on different levels and in different domains of a language, add up and happen to go in the same direction a global reorganization of a language may occur, as it was the case with English. I am deeply indepted to Hildegard L.C. Tristram and Nikolai N. Kazanski, who brought the topic of change into my life. Long conversations in their offices, which seemed casual at the time, and their upbeat personalities were decisive in encouraging me to focus on the typological change of English. During my research I was supported by a number of people who provided me with professional advice. I am especially indebted to Ilse Wischer, Peter Siemund, and Bernd Kortmann, who read the manuscript carefully and to whom I owe an incalculable number of suggestions. I would also like to thank Ferdinand von Mengden, Ursula Schäfer, Hans Sauer, Hans-Olav Enger, and Lukas Pietsch for comments and hints made on several occasions. In the final stages of completing the book, Birgit Sievert and Angelika Hermann at Mouton de Gruyter gave wonderful support. Finally, I would like to thank the large number of people for whom this book is less important than the well-being of its author, above all Stefan Voß, Max Thormälen, Jakob Timm, Ulrike Nordheim, Torsten Buchwald, Hanna Burdorf, Maike Berger, and my colleagues in Rostock. Hamburg, September 2010

Contents

1.

2.

3.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The goals of the present study . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. The structure of the present study . . . . . . . . . . 4. Studies on the development of English derivational morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 General accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Studies on quantitative changes in the use of prefixes and suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The typological change of English word-formation . 6. Two scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Overview of past studies of morphological typology 2.1 Morphological typology and derivation . . . 2.2 General remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Language change and morphological typology . . . 3.1 Sapir’s concept of ‘drift’ . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Dixon’s typological clock . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Typological changes in IE languages . . . . 4. The structural types of encoding lexical information . 4.1 Analytic encoding techniques . . . . . . . . 4.2 Synthetic encoding techniques: Agglutination and fusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The status of zero-derivation: synthetic or analytic? . 6. A typological profile of Old English . . . . . . . . . 7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 4 5 7 7 9 13 14 17 17 17 18 22 23 23 25 27 31 32 37 42 43 45

The framework: Suffixation and conceptual categories . . . . 46 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 2. Grammatical vs. semantic analysis of derivatives . . 46

viii Contents

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 4.

5.

Semantic description of suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . The approach taken in the present study . . . . . . . 4.1 Word-formation rules from a cognitive perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Schemas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Conceptual categories . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The role of suffixes in a schema-based approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Advantages of the schema-based approach . The five conceptual categories . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Major shortcomings of the schema-based approach . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48 50 50 52 56 58 59 63 64 65 66 67 68 70 70

The corpus & methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Linguistic variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Selection of the texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Methodology: Identifying nominal derivatives in the texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Documentation of the results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Other criteria guiding the empirical analysis . . . . . 6.1 Compounds with complex determinatum . . 6.2 The dividing line between suffixoids and suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Zero-derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Productivity in word-formation . . . . . . . . . . .

71 71 73 75

Category 1: Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data . 2.1 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 -EL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90 90 91 91 93

78 80 83 83 83 86 87

Contents ix

. . . . . . . . .

94 96 97 100 101 104 105 106 107

6.

Category 2: Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Object-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data . 2.1 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 -DOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 -EL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 -EN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 -UNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 -Ø (zero-derivation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Minor Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

109 109 110 110 111 113 115 116 116 118 118

7.

Category 3: Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 -ÆRN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 -DOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 -EL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 -EN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 -UNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 -Ø (zero-derivation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Minor formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119 119

3.

2.3 -EN . . . . . . . . . 2.4 -END . . . . . . . . 2.5 -ERE . . . . . . . . 2.6 -ING . . . . . . . . 2.7 -LING . . . . . . . . 2.8 -OR . . . . . . . . . 2.9 -Ø (zero-derivation) 2.10 -ESTRE . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . .

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120 120 123 124 126 127 128 130 131 131

x Contents

8.

9.

10.

Category 4: Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Action-noun Suffixes in OE and early ME: The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 -EN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 -LAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 -NESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 -UNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 -Ø (zero-derivation). . . . . . . . . 2.7 Minor Processes . . . . . . . . . . 3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . 133 . . . . . 133 . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

133 133 136 137 138 140 142 144 146

Category 5: Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 -D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 -DOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 -EN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 -HAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 -LAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 -NESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 -RÆDEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 -SCIPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 -UNG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.10 -Ø (zero-derivation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.11 Minor Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

147 147 149 149 151 154 155 157 160 164 166 168 170 171 171

The development of Old English noun suffixes . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Statistical analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Overview of the empirical data . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Person: From nine suffixes to four . . . 3.2 Object: Loss of morphological marking . 3.3 Location: Loss of all suffixes . . . . . . 3.4 Action: From six suffixes to two . . . . .

173 173 173 175 175 177 180 182

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contents xi

3.5 Abstract: From ten suffixes to eight . . . . . 3.6 Summary suffixation . . . . . . . . . . . . . The overall frequency of nominal derivatives . . . . Asymmetries in Old English and early Middle English derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The frequency of noun suffixes from a formal perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

184 187 187

The typological change of English word-formation . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Derivation in Old English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. The foundation of the PDE system of nominal derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. The loss of categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The change of the status of the base form . . . . . . 5.1 Root-based morphology . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Stem-based morphology . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Word-based morphology . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 The development towards isolated morpheme boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Language contact and the re-introduction of stembased morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

205 205 205

4. 5. 6. 7. 11.

12.

Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The classical distinction between inflection and derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. The inflection – derivation continuum . . . . . . . 4. Inflection, derivation and the loss of morphological markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The loss of bound morphemes in derivation and inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

191 195 201

208 211 213 216 221 226 233 237 239 240 240 241 243 252 255

xii Contents

5.1

6. 13.

14.

Asymmetry in the number of morphemes in inflection and derivation . . . . . . . . . . 255 5.2 The survival of seven derivational suffixes 260 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Noun formation after the early ME period . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The impact of French on English derivation . . . . 3. A typology of noun suffixes added to the inventory of English derivational morphology . . . . . . . . . 4. The structural consequences of lexical borrowing . 5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

268 272 274

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. The point of departure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. The reasons for the typological change of English 4. Final remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

275 275 275 278 280

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265 265 266

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Abbreviations

GER Gmc IE LAT ME OE OHG ON PDE POR RUS SPA

German Germanic Indo-European Latin Middle English Old English Old High German Old Norse Present-Day English Portuguese Russian Spanish

NOM ACC GEN DAT

Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

sg pl

singular plural

masc fem

masculine feminine

Chapter 1 Introduction

1. Preliminaries In its 1,400 years of recorded writing, English underwent a typological shift from a predominantly synthetic towards a predominantly analytic language and has become more advanced in analyticity than most of the other languages of the IE family. The earliest Middle English texts give evidence of this global typological change, which began already during the Old English (OE) period ([449] 700–1150), as grammatical innovations in tenth century Northumbrian interlinear gloss writing show. The shift is related to a change in the encoding type of grammatical information, which is expressed by means of bound morphemes in synthetic languages, and by means of free morphemes surrounding a lexeme in analytic languages. In English, this change from one type towards the other one surfaces most prominently in quantitative changes, as it underwent a progressive and almost complete deconstruction of the complex system of nominal and verbal inflection inherited from common Germanic. Only one fusional inflection marker survived into Present-Day English (PDE), the verbal marker -s indicating the grammatical categories of Person (third person), Number (singular), Tense (present tense), and Mood (indicative). However, even this inflection marker is omitted in many varieties of English, most notably in African American Vernacular English. Other bound morphemes survived as well, but they indicate one type of categorical information only and should therefore be classified as agglutinating suffixes rather than as inflections in the strictest sense: PDE verbs may be modified also for past tense (-ed) and for progressiveness (-ing, in combination with a form of to be), and nouns for plurality (-s) and some Genitive functions (-s), the latter alternating with a prepositional construction involving of in some contexts. This type of marking is, however, not obligatory in the sense that the presence of these morphemes is dictated by the syntactic environment in which a verb or a noun occurs. Rather, the use of these morphemes is partly semantically determined and thus a choice of the speaker. Only plural marking affects the syntactic environment of the word-form it is attached to as it triggers a change of the form of adjacent elements, e.g. demonstrative pronouns (that house : these house-s). The loss of inflections was accompanied

2 Introduction by a loss of all instances of agreement between the constituents within the NP that existed OE, at least in the earliest periods, except for plural concord with demonstrative pronouns. The only inflection in PDE whose presence is obligatory and determined by the syntactic environment exclusively is the third person singular marker -s which, however, does not hold for all dialects and all varieties of English. Remnants of the complex system of inflection in OE can be found with the personal pronouns of the first and third person singular and the first and third person plural. The pronouns change their forms in object position: I – me, he – him, she – her, we – us, they – them. The forms do, however, not distinguish between indirect (dative) and direct (accusative) object, which is the result of the syncretism of the pronominal case forms of the dative and the accusative that occurred during the ME period.1 The reduced inventory of inflections in PDE forms a strong contrast to the comparatively complex system of nominal and verbal inflection that characterized OE. Table 1 illustrates the basic differences between both language states with respect to inflectional morphology. While the inventory of inflectional markers indicating particular grammatical categories was reduced, resulting in a largely simplified system of morphology, complexity was introduced on the syntactic level through the grammaticalization of the order of constituents, the use of prepositions for the marking of syntactic roles, and the obligatory use of free morphemes for the grammatical modification of uninflected stems, such as the use of personal pronouns in the VP to indicate person and number. However, in spite of the almost complete loss of inflections and the generation of analytic structures for the expression of grammatical categories English has not become an entirely isolating language in the sense that categorical information cannot be indicated by means of bound morphemes at all. While the shift from syntheticity to analyticity affected the field of grammar, English derivation seems to have resisted this change as it still operates on the basis of a comparatively rich inventory of prefixes and suffixes: Marchand (1969) lists 146 affixes for PDE (81 suffixes, 65 prefixes). There are, of course, instances of zero-derivation and thus of phonologically unmarked instances of word-formation, which existed in OE as well but increased in frequency from the 13th century on (Biese 1941), coinciding with the general tendency of English towards isolation. However, this procedure has neither outnumbered nor replaced affixation as the main word formation device. Thus, from the point of view of derivation English is still predominantly synthetic in character.

Preliminaries 3 Table 1. Inflectional morphology in OE and PDE

NP

VP

OE

PDE

N

inflection 4 cases, 3 genders, 2 numbers, 4 strong inflection classes and a weak one

no inflection plural marking with -s (three phonetic realizations: [s], [z], [ız]), residual plurals: umlaut, -en, zero, possession marking with -s (three phonetic realizations: [s], [z], [ız])

Adj

inflection agree in case, gender, and number with the noun they modify, weak and strong inflection

no inflection

ProN

inflection 4 cases (demonstratives: 5 cases), 3 genders, 2 numbers (3 numbers with personal personal pronouns)

no inflection separate forms of a DAT/ ACC with personal pronouns (except for second person)

Det

(not grammaticalized) demonstratives2 were inflected for 5 cases, 3genders, 2 numbers in a weak and a strong paradigm

no inflection (three phonetic realizations: [,], [i], [i:])

V

inflection 3 persons, 2 numbers, 2 tenses, 3 moods strong and weak inflection

no inflection, except for third person -s in the singular, past tense and participle suffix -ed ([t], [d], [ıd]), progressive marker -ing, irregular verbs

The synthetic character of the encoding technique of lexical information in PDE is, however, not necessarily inherited from OE. It is a well-known fact that the inventory of derivational morphemes in PDE is largely French-

4 Introduction based and that non-native prefixes and suffixes clearly outnumber native ones (see Chapter 13). In this sense, a trend towards the loss of derivational affixes might have remained unnoticed since it was followed by a refilling of emptied inventories with suffixes from French and Latin words that flooded the English lexicon during the years following the Norman Conquest and during the English Renaissance, respectively. This raises a number of questions related to derivational morphology, such as the question of the extent to which derivational morphology was actually used in OE, if and how the frequency of use of these affixes changed during the ME period, and in what way French- (and later Latin-) based affixes altered the system of English derivation, i.e. if they contributed to a decline in the frequency of use of the Old English suffixes or if the system had been weakened already before French suffixes became productive in English. Further questions arise from the typological discrepancy between the predominantly analytic expression of grammatical categories, on the one hand, and the predominantly synthetic expression of lexical categories, on the other hand. The basic question of the present study is therefore the following: Was there indeed no change of the encoding type of categorical information within the domain of the lexicon from OE to ME, i.e. did the loss of bound morphemes affect inflection only? If the answer is positive, we would have to find an explanation for the different historical development in both domains and explore in what way the encoding of lexical information is different from that of grammatical (or relational) information, i.e. why the first is apparently more resistant to change than the second. If the answer should turn out to be negative, the question is how the loss of derivational morphemes was compensated for and in what way the empty inventories were refilled with new, foreign suffixes during the centuries following the Norman Conquest. 2. The goals of the present study The present investigation seeks to explore the typological shift of English from a predominantly synthetic towards a predominantly analytic language that occurred during the OE and early ME period from the viewpoint of word-formation, thus focusing on derivational morphology. The question is whether the tendency of English to shift towards more analytic techniques of expressing categorical information occurred only in the field of grammar, or whether it also affected the encoding of lexical information. In order to detect possible quantitative changes within derivational morphology

The structure of the present study 5

that might give evidence of a much more global typological shift of the structural type of English, an empirical analysis of Old English and early Middle English (ME) nominal suffixes was conducted and combined with a documentation of the change of the structure of lexemes in general, namely that from roots (in IE) over stems (Common Germanic and partly OE) to words (from OE on). This change affected the typological parameters of morphology in general, since morphological operations in a root-based language differ from those in a stem-based language, which in turn are different from those occurring in a word-based language. The early Middle English period is of particular interest as it is a period of transition from one morphological type to another: it is the time when the losses in inflectional morphology surfaced in full extent in writing and thus probably also the time when possible changes in the derivational component can be observed as well. This means that the role of the influx of French words and the use of French-based affixes, which became fully productive only from the fifteenth century on, will have to remain a marginal topic in the present study. It is, however, an essential aspect of the historical development of English derivation, since the integration of French- (and later Latin) based suffixes into English altered the system of derivation in such a way that roughly eighty per cent of PDE derivational affixes are of non-native origin (see Chapter 13) and that formal alternations of lexical bases were reintroduced into English. The second goal, although subordinated to the typological question, is to provide the first comprehensive documentation of OE nominal derivation. The present study does not only offer an overview of the morphological and semantic properties of OE/early ME noun suffixes, but also provides empirical data on the frequency of occurrence of these suffixes with transparent word-forms in general, and their frequency with new word forms, i.e. nouns that are not only repetitions from earlier periods, in particular. 3. The structure of the present study The following section presents a brief synopsis of the literature on historical English word-formation and places particular emphasis on indicators for a possible large-scale loss of derivational morphemes. Chapter 2 deals with the terms synthetic and analytic and the different techniques of encoding categorical information (fusional, isolating and agglutinating) and how these, after a long tradition of being almost exclusively used for inflection, may be applied to a classification of the structural type of encoding lexical

6 Introduction information. It will be argued that since both grammatical and lexical categories may be encoded by means of bound morphemes that are attached to lexical bases, reductions in the use of bound morphemes that occur in one domain (inflection) may occur also in the other one (derivation). The theoretical framework underlying the present corpus-based empirical study is presented in Chapter 3. The approach taken here is not the traditional grammatical one, i.e. one by which derivatives are either analyzed as being based on underlying sentences (as e.g. in Marchand 1965, 1969) or as purely formal combinations of a particular class of lexical bases with particular type of suffixes, which leads to categories like nominal suffixes, verbal suffixes, etc. Rather, the OE and ME noun suffixes investigated here are analyzed as indicators of conceptual categories, based on a cognitive linguistic framework in the tradition of Langacker (2008) and making use of cognitive schema theories developed in cognitive psychology (e.g. Anderson and Pearson 1988; Rumelhart 1975; Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland, and Hinton 1986), with some modifications. The texts that form the corpus on which the empirical study of OE and early ME noun suffixes is based will be presented in Chapter 4, which also includes a discussion of the criteria used for the identification of suffixes. Since only those derivatives were included into the analysis which could be analyzed as transparent from a synchronic OE point of view, the chapter provides a discussion of the criteria that were used to identify “transparent” formations. A detailed analysis of OE and early ME noun suffixes is provided in Chapters 5 to 9, including information on the origin of the suffixes, their morphological combinability, the semantics of the derivatives they were attested with, and empirical data. The latter document the frequency of occurrence of each noun suffix, in general, and their frequency with new word-forms within the five conceptual categories distinguished in the present study. Since most of the OE suffixes were polysemous in the sense that they indicated more than one particular category, their frequency of occurrence was investigated for different functions. This method proved to be advantageous as it revealed in which domains exactly the use of synthetic strategies of indicating lexical categories was reduced. In Chapter 10 the data will be related to the question raised in the introductory part of the present study, namely whether they indicate a trend towards a progressive decline in the use of bound morphemes in wordformation or not. Theoretical implications deriving from the data will be discussed in Chapter 11. The quantitative changes observed for the noun

Studies on the development of English derivational morphology 7

suffixes during the OE and early ME period will be related to qualitative changes that occurred simultaneously in the language, namely the typological shift from stem-based to word-based morphology and the one from base-variant to base-invariant morphology. In Chapter 12, derivation will be related to inflection and to the question of whether the historical changes in inflectional morphology sketched above affected derivational morphology as well. Inflectional and derivational categories fulfil different functions, but in both domains the input to morphological operations is a lexical base with a particular morphological status (root, stem, or word). A change of morphological structure of these bases should therefore affect the encoding technique of categorical information (derivational and inflectional) in general. Chapter 13 presents an outline of the development of English derivational morphology after the early Middle English period, where the present empirical study ends. It will be discussed in what way French suffixes contributed to an increase in the number of bound morphemes as means of expressing lexical information in a synthetic way. The results of the present study will be summarized in Chapter 14. 4. Studies on the development of English derivational morphology 4.1. General accounts Typological changes in English word-formation were accounted for mainly by Kastovsky (1985, 1992a, 1992b, 2006a, 2006b), although he never used the terms synthetic and analytic for the description of the encoding strategies used in word-formation. In all of these articles, Kastovsky focused on the qualitative changes in English derivation exclusively, i.e. the change of the morphological status of the lexical base in the history of English (and before), but never on quantitative ones. Generally, the documentation of quantitative changes in the field of derivational morphology, i.e. in the frequency of use of prefixes and suffixes during the (artificially imposed) transition from OE to ME, is often very general and statements tend to be based on intuition more than on empirical analysis. Intuitive statements read as such (italics are mine and indicate the vagueness of the evaluation): In the Middle English period, prefixation as a means of word formation was in retreat. Many of the Old English prefixes had become unproductive or disappeared altogether, and many new adoptions from French and Latin had

8 Introduction not proceeded beyond the second stage mentioned above [the productive use of foreign suffixes for new formations]. (Burnley 1992: 446) Of the forty [suffixes] or so, which existed in Old English, about threequarters persisted into Middle English, where they were joined by numerous additions from foreign sources. (Burnley 1992: 447)

Thus, information on the development of derivational morphology is usually restricted to vague statements on the quantity of the material lost.5 Likewise, the influence of French affixes on the system of English derivation is often restricted to vague, intuitive statements on the quantity of French suffixes that entered English and to an enumeration of some single suffixes and their derivatives (e.g. Faiß 1992: 7374). However, an analysis of the semantic classes which these suffixes represent is often absent. This makes it difficult to determine whether the non-native suffixes filled certain ‘semantic gaps’ and thus satisfied a ‘need’ for expressive means on the side of the speakers of English, or whether they merely added morphological variety without providing new possibilities of expressing particular categories or concepts, as Nevalainen (1999) suggests. The diachronic development of the use of derivational morphology for the formation of new words from a general perspective, especially during the crucial period from OE to ME, is a rather neglected field and can, so far, solely be reconstructed on the basis of the comparison of several detailed studies of single affixes or derivational processes. Examples are the studies on the decline of OE prefixes by Horgan (1980) and Hiltunen (1983), the study on the development of zero-derivation by Biese (1941), or case studies that document the development of single suffixes, e.g. Munske (1964) on -ing/-ung (Germanic *-inga/-unga), OE -er(e) (Kastovsky 1971), OE -el and its variants in the Épinal Erfurt (Sauer 2001), suffixes with nouns denoting persons (Sauer 2007), formations with OE -nes (Möhlig 2001), abstract noun formations with -d#m, -hd, -lc, -ræden, -sceaft, -stæf and -wist (Dietz 2007), or the use of -lac (Aertsen 1987). These studies focus on different patterns with these suffixes, i.e. they seek to describe the morphological behavior of the suffixes, but they are not empirical (except for Hiltunen 1983). The author’s statements on the frequency or productivity of OE suffixes are mostly based on intuition, depending on whether a suffix occurred with a variety of different word-forms or not. Two studies deal with word-formation patterns in Middle English from a more global perspective. The first study is the one by Zbierska-Sawala (1993), who focused on early Middle English word-formation, but who did

Studies on the development of English derivational morphology 9

not provide any empirical data. Rather, the author presents some general remarks on the major affixes without distinguishing between productive and unproductive affixes and without commenting on the structural changes that occurred in English word-formation in that period, above all the shift from stem-based to word-based morphology. Dalton-Puffer (1996) conducted an empirical analysis of ME suffixes (native and non-native ones), covering the period between 1150 and 1420. Her analysis is a good starting point for getting some idea of the extent to which particular suffixes occurred in different word-forms. However, as it covers the ME period only a change that might have occurred between the OE and the ME period cannot be detected. The only standard description of OE word-formation (thus including nominal derivation) so far has been the article by Kastovsky (1992a) in the Cambridge History of the English Language, who gives a general overview of the major word-formation processes in OE and lists all affixes, describing their morphological behavior and their semantics. Other studies only list some example suffixes from OE (e.g. Wolff 1975: 3940; Faiß 1992: 5661), or are restricted to an analysis of word-formation patterns found in some specific texts (e.g. Sprockel 1973, who provides a list of all affixes found in the Parker Chronicle). However, none of these studies provides empirical data, i.e. it remains open to which extent particular suffixes were actually used to extend the OE lexicon and which of them were unproductive, but still occurred in a number of word-forms. Historical information on English word-formation can also be found in the three classical handbooks by Koziol ([1937] 1972), Jespersen ([1905] 1943), and Marchand (1969). The amount of diachronic information varies in each of them, but it is of secondary importance anyway since the studies are basically descriptions of Modern English word-formation. 4.2. Studies on quantitative changes in the use of OE prefixes and suffixes With respect to the development of OE prefixes, Baugh and Cable ([1951] 2002: 181) conclude that “many of the OE prefixes gradually lost their vitality, their ability to enter into new combinations.” Among these “many” prefixes are mostly verbal prefixes, e.g. for- (OE for-), which lost its productivity in ME, to- (OE t#-), which disappeared, and with- (OE wi-), which occurred in some new word-forms in ME, but eventually disappeared as well. The same holds for prefixes such as be-, of-, æt- and a-,

10 Introduction many of which can be associated with a locative meaning. Only two prefixes with a predominantly locative meaning persisted into Modern English, over- and under-, but also these “fell into comparative disuse for a time after the Norman Conquest.” (Baugh and Cable [1951] 2002: 219) Burnley (1992: 446) states that only “a small portion“ of the thirty-four prefixes listed by Quirk and Wrenn (1957) continued in use beyond the first half of the thirteenth century, although they underwent a considerable decline in productivity. Many suffixes “were widely used in words inherited from Old English in the Early Middle English period” (446), e.g. a-, be-, for-, to-, ge-, ymb-, which suggests that most of them were fossilized. A reduction in the frequency of use of prefixes was observed by Horgan (1980) and Hiltunen (1983), who have shown that already at the end of the tenth century the system of OE prefixation was in a state of advanced decay. The results of Hiltunen’s (1983) corpus-based study of the historical development of OE prefixes may be taken as a first indicator for the assumption that a loss of bound morphemes occurred also in word-formation. In his chapter on “the breakdown of the Old English prefix-system” Hiltunen (1983: 92) states that Right from the first pages of Ancr [The Ancrene Riwle], for instance, one cannot avoid the impression of the prefixes having been swept away almost overnight. The suddenness is remarkable in view of the longish and stable OE period.

The frequency of verbal prefixes in ME is generally “low by Old English standards” (93). Most of them are practically absent, the type and token frequencies of others were reduced to a half of the ones found in OE. In general, his data indicate a substantial weakening of the productivity of OE prefixes in ME, although “the number of native prefixes has remained almost unchanged” (Hiltunen 1983: 47). According to the author, the decline in productivity is very likely to have begun during the late OE period, as it is apparent in the transitional Peterborough Chronicle. The loss of prefixes that occurred in bound form only, e.g. a-, be-, ymb-, was more radical than that of prefixes which could also occur in isolation, e.g. for, under. The loss of productivity of the prefixes was preceded by a considerable weakening of their meaning in OE, which cannot be specified in most cases: some prefixes exhibited a variety of meanings (e.g. ge-, for-), in other cases a clear semantic difference between the base and the derivative cannot be reconstructed, e.g. in the case of formations with a-, be- or ge- (e.g. afeoll : feoll ‘fell’, gedyde : dyde ‘did’). Furthermore, many prefixes were interchangeable without apparent changes in meaning (Lindemann 1970; Hor-

Studies on the development of English derivational morphology 11

gan 1980), e.g. on eoran gefeoll ‘fell on earth’ : nyer afeoll ‘fell down’ (Hiltunen 1983: 73). The most important conclusion for the present study is that prefixes lost their productivity already during the OE period and had probably done so even before, since the concrete meanings of prefixes (e.g. locative) started to weaken “perhaps well before the appearance of the first texts” (Hiltunen 1983: 95). As the author states, one may observe a development towards using the same types more and more often in late OE: “the relative proportion of word types is decreasing, i.e. their repetition rate is increasing, but at the same time their lexical richness is diminishing (87).”6 Prefixed constructions were progressively replaced by those formed with phrasal adverbs and prepositional adverbs.7 Eventually, the adverbs ousted the use of prefixes, probably due to the fact that they provided more explicitness than the semantically ambiguous or empty prefixed forms. The conclusion one may draw from the studies of prefixation in OE and ME is that bound morphemes ceased to be used for the indication of lexical information and were replaced by adverbial constructions. Thus, analytic constructions, consisting of a verb and a postposed adverb, replaced the former synthetic structures in which information was indicated by means of bound morphemes (prefixes). One may therefore interpret the loss of prefixes and their replacement by adverbial constructions in English as a first indicator for a shift of the encoding strategy of lexical information towards analyticity. The fact that PDE has, according to the list in Marchand (1969), 64 prefixes of which only seven are Germanic suggests that the emptied inventory was refilled with French-based prefixes. In this sense, the increase in use of analytic (postparticle) constructions in OE was followed by the adoption of new morphological material during the ME and early Modern English periods. With respect to the development of OE suffixes, Baugh and Cable ([1951] 2002: 182) state that A similar decline [as the one observed for OE prefixes] is observable in the formative power of certain suffixes which were widely used in Old English. The loss here is perhaps less distinctly felt because some important endings have remained in full force.

The authors list -lock (OE -lc) and -red (OE -rde) as suffixes that were lost, although no date is given. Suffixes that survived are e.g. -ness, -hood and some adjective endings, such as -ful, -less and -some. Burnley’s (1992: 447) evaluation of the change suggests the opposite: “Of the forty or so [suffixes] which existed in Old English, about three-quarters persisted into Middle English, where they were joined by numerous additions from for-

12 Introduction eign sources.” This implies that the loss of suffixes was little significant for the overall system and that the system of English suffixation in general never really underwent a significant weakening, as most of the suffixes were preserved. Since Burnley does not list the suffixes and discusses only four chosen adjectival and nominal suffixes (-ful, -ish -ling and Dutchbased -kin), it remains unclear what the exact number of OE suffixes was, how many of these were lost, and how the expression “persisted into Middle English” has to be understood: Were they preserved in fossilized wordforms only, or were they used for new formations? Furthermore, the role of the “additions from foreign sources” remains unclear: Were they equivalents to native suffixes or did they introduce new semantic categories that had remained unexpressed by means of bound morphemes before? Kastovsky (1992a: 384) lists twenty “principal” OE nominal suffixes and discusses the morphological behavior and the semantics of each suffix, but it remains unclear in what way they were actually used for the creation of new nouns and which of them tended to occur in fossilized word-forms only in OE. The only empirical study on the use of English suffixes from a more global and diachronic perspective is Dalton-Puffer’s (1996) study of ME nominal, adjectival and verbal suffixes. The results should certainly be taken with care, as her study is a computer-based search of derivatives found in the Helsinki Corpus, in which only the first 2,000 words of each ME text are available. Thus, a large amount of material remained unanalyzed. Furthermore, the data indicate the overall occurrence of the suffixes (types and tokens), but not their occurrence with new word-forms, which means that fossilized forms (and thus mere repetitions) and new formations were not distinguished. Nevertheless, the study allows for some conclusions that might be indicative of a possible trend towards a decrease in the use of bound morphemes for the indication of lexical information. Within the derivational category of abstract noun suffixes, five out of eight noun suffixes were not used for new creations in ME, i.e. they were either eliminated or underwent a drop in productivity, namely -REDEN, -LAC, -TH, -DOM and -SHIP8. The others, -NESS, -HEDE, and -UNG retained their productivity to a higher or lower degree. Five out of the six Germanic-based Agent noun suffixes ceased to be used during the ME period (e.g. -END, -ESTRE, -ILD), i.e. the loss amounted to 83%. Furthermore, almost all of the ten adjectival suffixes of Germanic origin listed by Dalton-Puffer (1996) underwent a rapid decrease in productivity during the ME period: 70% of these suffixes were certainly not productive in ME, and only -ED, -IG and -FUL remained in frequent use.

The typological change of English word-formation 13

5. The typological change of English word-formation General accounts of the historical development of English derivational morphology and its typological character were given by Kastovsky (1985, 1992b, 2006a, 2006b) and are, to my knowledge, the only sources in this respect. In an article from 1985, the author studied the continuation of semantic patterns of word-formation from Old English to Modern English, using deverbal nominalization as an example. The analysis is based on derivational categories that derive from a syntactic-semantic framework in which several thematic roles are distinguished: Action/Fact, Agent, Experiencer, Objective, Factive, Goal/Benefactive, Instrumental and Locative. It includes all deverbal nouns recorded in Bosworth and Toller ([1898] 1921) and Hall (1960), which were attested with 14 native noun suffixes expressing the eight categories: -(e)d/-t/-(o), -el/-ol, -els, -en, -end, -ere, -estre, -ett, -icge, -ing/-ung, -ing2, -ling, -ness, -ø. For Modern English, Kastovsky suggests nine basic semantic-syntactic categories, i.e. English acquired one more category, that of “temporal nouns”, such as spring from OE springan, which is, however, not really productive. These nine categories are expressed by means of 17 suffixes of which nine, however, are French-based and one is a zero-morpheme. In other words, only seven native suffixes remained in use, of which four are, according to Kastovsky (1985: 226), unproductive (-el/-le, -ling, -ster, -th), i.e. only three suffixes are actually used for the derivation of deverbal nouns in Modern English (-er, -ing, -ness). The result of the comparison is, according to the author, a “striking continuity” of the semantic patterns of OE into Modern English (253), and deverbal derivation “has proved fairly stable during the history of English” (253). The adoption of non-native suffixes did not alter these patterns, i.e. no new semantic categories and means of expressing them were introduced. In three more recent articles, Kastovsky (1992b, 2006a, 2006b) described the overall historical change of English derivational morphology from a partly stem-based, partly word-based morphological type towards an exclusively word-based type in Modern English with respect to native word-formation. Thus, morphophonemic and allomorphic alternations of the base, which could still be observed in OE, but which were unpredictable in most cases, all disappeared in word-formation on a native basis, partly due to the loss of the conditions that triggered phonological alternation of the base (e.g. i-umlaut, palatalization, assibiliation) and the loss of morphologically conditioned alternations (ablaut grades). OE was thus a language with pervasive stem-variation, which, however, “was not predict-

14 Introduction able any more” (2006b: 75), that is, purely allomorphic. This situation led to analogical restructuring by which most of the nominal derivatives that exhibited stem-alternation were eliminated and replaced by non-alternating forms, or by loans, except for some few residuals such as long – length or sing – song. Variability of the lexical base was, however, re-introduced as a consequence of the contact with French, by which a second system of word-formation, based on non-native morphological material and rules, became established in English. In Kastovsky (2006b) it is argued that local changes may induce global changes, which change the overall gestalt of a language, i.e. its typological character. Local changes may interact and point into the same direction, producing a cumulative effect whose result may be a general typological change of a given language. Focusing on the development of English morphology, the author shows that local changes occurred in different domains, resulting in (1) a change of the morphological status of the input to morphological processes (shift from a predominantly stem-based towards a word-based language), (2) the loss of morphophonemic alternations, which became opaque in OE and changed into allomorphic alternations, cluttering the English lexicon with alternations both in inflection and derivation of which none was phonologically predictable, and (3) a change of the status of inflectional classes, which were indicated by the stem-formative in IE and Germanic, but came to be implicational (i.e. an inherent feature of the lexical base) after the stem-formative was deleted and became irrecoverable. This development favored the progressive dissolution of inflection classes by means of the progressive shifts of nouns from one class to another. All these developments affected English word-formation in the following way. English derivational processes on a native basis came to be based on words rather than on roots or stems, i.e. the input to wordformation processes became an invariant base. The adoption of a large number of morphologically related loan words from French resulted in the formation of a second lexical stratum, characterized by phonological and morphological alternation of the base form in derivationally related pairs. 6. Two scenarios There are two possible scenarios for the development of English morphology from a general perspective. Scenario I (see Figure 1) is based on the hypothesis that the expression of both grammatical and lexical information

Two scenarios 15

was affected by a general ‘drift’ of English towards analytic structures. In other words, the shift towards analyticity cannot have been restricted to one component only, since both grammar and word-formation operate with bound morphemes to indicate categorical information in synthetic languages, such as OE. The idea is that the shift of English from stem-based to word-based morphology and thus towards base-invariant morphology should have affected the type of morphological modification of lexemes in general. With isolated morpheme boundaries dominating the language, the locus of expressing categorical information tended to be shifted from one on the lexical base itself towards specific positions outside the base. GRAMMATICAL

LEXICAL

synthetic

synthetic

early OE late OE/early ME

ME/early ModE

INFORMATION

shift

completion analytic

interruption or reversal through external influence (Norman French) synthetic

Figure 1. First Scenario for the historical development of English morphology

In this sense, Scenario I suggests that both grammar and word-formation started off as predominantly synthetic in OE with respect to the encoding of categorical information. During the OE period (probably before) both components underwent a gradual shift towards analytic encoding techniques of categorical information, which surfaced in full extent in the texts of the early ME period, when the West-Saxon literary standard was progressively given up. While the shift was completed in the domain of grammar in the fourteenth century in all dialects, it was probably interrupted or reversed in the field of word-formation through the borrowing of morphologically related loan-words from French. These loans began to form a second layer in the English lexicon and, some 200 years after the conquest, to be segmented by speakers of English, resulting in the use of non-native affixes for the derivation of new words. Thus, in Early Modern English, the period in which the English lexicon underwent an unprecedented growth and French (and Latin) affixes became really productive (see Nevalainen 1999), English regained a rich inventory of derivational morphemes.

16 Introduction On the other hand, one might argue that the gradual loss of the productivity of some Germanic affixes, as discussed by some authors (see above), was a minor development, having affected some few affixes only, but not being indicative for a change of the encoding type of lexical information in English in general. This line of reasoning leads to the postulation of a second scenario: the encoding type of information in both components started off as synthetic in OE, but the move or ‘drift’ into a different typological direction occurred only in the grammatical domain. GRAMMATICAL

early OE late OE/early ME ME/early ModE

synthetic shift analytic

LEXICAL

INFORMATION

synthetic continuation, enrichment synthetic

Figure 2. Second scenario for the historical development of English morphology

Scenario II supports the idea of “split morphology”, which means that inflectional morphology is clearly separated from derivational morphology: while inflection is determined by syntax, derivation belongs to the lexicon of a language (Perlmutter 1988). The functional differences that exist between both types of morphemes (e.g. inflection tends to be obligatory, regular, is organized in paradigms, and does not exhibit idiosyncrasy) would support the assumption that both components were subjected to different developments and that derivation remained largely unaffected by the typological changes that occurred within the grammatical component. The independent development in both domains thus resulted in a split of the encoding technique used to indicate two different types of categorical information: while inflectional morphology was heavily reduced, derivational morphology still exhibits a comparatively large set of morphological exponents with 145 different affixes (as listed by Marchand 1969).9 Both scenarios are plausible and derive their justification from different understandings of the relation between inflection and derivation. In order to falsify one or the other, an empirical analysis of derivational morphemes, which reflects the actual use of these morphemes in OE and early ME, seems to be the most adequate approach. The present study focuses on noun suffixes, i.e. suffixes that were used to create nouns from verbs, adjectives, nouns or, in some rare cases, from other parts of speech.

Chapter 2 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon

1. Introduction This chapter has two goals. Firstly, it will be discussed how the terms syntheticity and analyticity have been defined in the literature and, secondly, in what way they will be used in the present study. Thus, the first part of this chapter presents an overview of past and recent studies on the typology of languages in terms of their morphological structure, focusing on the role of derivation in different approaches. The second part of this chapter provides the parameters used for a classification of the encoding of lexical information as either synthetic or analytic. First, it will be explained in what way these terms may be applied to the lexical domain of a language, since in the past the terms analytic and synthetic have been used almost exclusively with reference to grammar, that is, to the presence or absence of inflectional markers indicating morphosyntactic categories. This holds, at least, for the linguistic tradition found in the Western periphery of Europe and the United States. Secondly, it will be discussed which processes indicate a change of the encoding strategy of lexical information from syntheticity to analyticity. 2. Overview of past studies of morphological typology The morphologically based classification of languages, which is the oldest way of classifying the languages on this planet, has traditionally been based on two parameters: (1) the internal complexity of words in the sense of the number of morphemes that make up a word (synthetic, analytic) and (2) the transparency of the boundaries between morphemes (fusional, isolating, agglutinating). An additional parameter refers to the functional load of morphemes, which tend to indicate more than one bit of information in fusional languages, but to be monosemantic in agglutinating languages. This typology has traditionally been applied to the classification of the encoding type of grammatical information in different languages, which may be synthetic (making use of inflections) or analytic (using periphrases), whereas the encoding type of lexical information, which may also corre-

18 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon spond to one type or the other, is either entirely ignored or mentioned only in passing. Exceptions are studies in the tradition of Slavic linguistics, such as Kryuchkova (2006), Golubkova and Taranova (2006) or Shaposhnikova (2005, 2006) for English10, Ohnheiser (2004), Sigal (2006) and Leitchik (2006) for Russian, or Hinrichs and Hinrichs (1995) and Hinrichs (2000) for spoken Serbian. Thus, languages may differ in the degree of syntheticity also in the lexicon, which can be measured in terms of the frequency of use of derivational affixes used for the encoding of lexical categorical information, and in terms of the transparency of morpheme boundaries. The two parameters are relatively independent, although overlaps are possible. For instance, many polysynthetic languages are agglutinating, but some may also have elements of fusion (e.g. Greenlandic). However, since the place of encoding categorical information (synthetic, analytic) requires the use of specific techniques of encoding it (e.g. fusional, isolating ones), the parameters exhibit a high degree of correlation. Some of these have already been suggested and described in the literature, e.g. the observation that noun incorporation is frequently found in polysynthetic languages, in which the process is used to enrich the lexicon and also to manipulate syntactic relations and pragmatic focus in a clause (Aikhenvald 2007: 62). Furthermore, isolating languages tend to have little derivational morphology and no inflections (Aikhenvald 2007: 44, 62), which suggests that grammar and the lexicon tend to share similar or identical encoding strategies. In languages in which word-classes are not morphologically defined or only to a small degree there is no or almost no category-changing or category-defining morphology (e.g. Vietnamese). A possible reason is that languages in which a functional syntactic slot (e.g. predicate, argument, modifier) is not reserved for linguistic units of a particular word-class no class-changing derivational processes are required since the units are flexible anyway (see also Aikhenvald 2007: 44). The present study focuses on the relation between particular encoding types used in the grammatical domain of a language (here: English) and those used in the lexicon. The data will provide evidence for the hypothesis that isolating tendencies in grammar are accompanied by isolating tendencies in the lexicon.

2.1. Morphological typology and derivation The classification of languages into different morphological types was based on the study of the expression of grammatical information rather than

Overview of past studies of morphological typology 19

that of lexical information in its earliest stages. The first to propose a typological differentiation of languages based on morphological criteria was Friedrich von Schlegel (1808), who suggested two types of languages, affixal and inflectional ones, based on how grammatical information is indicated. In the first case morphemes indicating “secondary ideas” are added to other morphemes. In the second type grammatical information is indicated by means of phonological alterations of morphemes (roots). August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1818) added a third language type, namely languages without affixation or inflection and thus without morphological structure (“amorphous” or “isolating” languages), and proposed a subdivision of languages into “synthetic” and “analytic” types. Again, the focus was on the encoding type of grammatical information: synthetic languages express the relation among words by means of a change of the word itself, whereas in analytic languages grammatical relationships are expressed by means of separate words or indicated by the position of words. Also Schleicher (1850), who used the categorization by Schlegel (1818) and distinguished between isolating, agglutinating and inflectional languages, did not include the expression type of lexical information in his typology: the first language type does not use affixes at all, the second one uses affixes that represent one grammatical category only and which are attached to a base without or with relatively little phonological alternation involved, the third one exhibits fusion of several grammatical categories into a single morpheme, which itself often undergoes phonological alternations when combined with roots. The first to explicitly include derivational morphology into a morphological typology of languages was Sapir ([1921] 1949), who modified the traditional way of classifying languages into different morphological types by introducing an approach that was based on two parameters. The first parameter is the number of morphemes per word, which gave rise to three distinct language types: analytic languages, in which words consist of one morpheme, synthetic languages, in which words consist of a small number of morphemes, and polysynthetic languages, which have a large number of morphemes per word. The second parameter is the technique used to modify lexical morphemes (isolating, i.e. no affixation and no formal change of morphemes, agglutinating, which is simple affixation with non-cumulative affixes, fusional, a type which exhibits considerable morphophonemic alternations, and symbolic, where stems are modified by means of reduplication, vowel change, or changes in stress). The decisive element in Sapir’s typology is the consideration of four types of conceptual information that

20 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon may be expressed by means of grammatical operations in a language: (1) concrete concepts (full lexical meaning), (2) derivational concepts (which contribute to the creation of new lexical items), (3) concrete relational concepts (which indicate partly lexical meaning, partly relational information that is relevant for adjacent elements), and (4) purely relational concepts (which exclusively indicate grammatical relations, i.e. they are purely abstract in meaning and relate different concrete concepts to each other within an utterance). These four conceptual types form a scale from more concrete to more abstract meaning, with (1) and (2) being more concrete in meaning, and (3) and (4) being more relational and thus more abstract. Sapir suggests that languages can function without derived and/or concrete relational concepts, i.e. without (2) and (3), but any language must have an expression of concrete concepts, i.e. of (1), and any form of expressing relational concepts, i.e. either (3) or (4). The classification of languages according to the presence or absence of any of these four types of concepts leads to a typology of languages based on four possible combinations: only (1) and (4) are expressed, (1), (2) and (4) are expressed, (1) and (3) are expressed, or (1), (2) and (3) are expressed. This approach gives rise to a complex classification of languages, which he arranged in a matrix composed of four fundamental language types, each of which exhibits a variety of techniques of encoding information. The implication of this typology for the present study is that a language does not necessarily need inflectional or derivational morphemes to indicate categorical information, but may operate e.g. with free lexical morphemes (‘words’) and some few free morphemes that indicate purely relational meaning (i.e. grammatical morphemes). It would therefore not be unusual to observe a progressive loss of both inflectional and derivational morphology in the history of a particular language as a consequence of the change of the technique that speakers choose to encode different concepts. With the advent of structuralism the typological classification of languages came to be based more on the structural types found in particular domains of a language rather than on the idea that languages constitute an indivisible whole. Greenberg ([1954] 1960) introduced an empirical approach into language typology that was based on the idea that linguistic structures are quantifiable. Moreover, the classification of languages should be determined by the frequency of occurrence of particular structural types rather than on the use of the vague terminology and the arbitrary character of the synthetic/analytic distinction that characterized all past approaches. The calculation of different indices included both inflectional and deriva-

Overview of past studies of morphological typology 21

tional elements and was based on ten morphological features that could be quantified according to their relative frequency, e.g. prefixation, suffixation or agreement. These features were analyzed for eight different languages, which were represented in short texts of a hundred words each. The general formula with which the morphological type of a language was determined was ‘frequency of X related to frequency of Y’, in which X was the total frequency of a particular type of (bound) morphemes, and Y the total number of words. This way, ten different indices can be calculated: Greenberg’s ([1954] 1960) set of indices Index

Formula

(1) Syntheticity index (2) Agglutination index (3) Composition index (4) Derivation index (5) Inflectional index (6) Prefixation index (7) Suffixation index (8) Isolation index (9) Inflection index II (10) Agreement index

morphemes/words agglutinating morphemes/junctures root morphemes/words derivational morphemes/words inflectional morphemes/words prefixes/words suffixes/words number of words/nexus cumulative morphemes/nexus instances of agreement/nexus

The calculation of these quotients is claimed to be the first truly objective measurement of previously defined typological variables, allowing for a classification of all natural languages according to different degrees of syntheticity, isolation, derivation, etc. With respect to the traditional major language types, a synthetic language would have a quotient of 2.0–2.99, an analytic language one between 1.0 and 1.99, a polysynthetic language one above 3.0, and an agglutinating language one above 0.5. In spite of several shortcomings of this empirical approach11, Greenberg’s calculation offers a more complex and objective classification of languages than the previous approaches. Languages are not classified in general terms, but according to the relative frequency of particular properties (suffixation, inflection etc.), and the classification accounts for the encoding techniques used in both grammar (inflection) and the lexicon (derivation). Several refinements and corrections of the shortcomings of Greenberg’s quantitative method were introduced in subsequent studies, e.g. Slavikova (1968), Kelemen (1970: 62), or Altmann and Lehfeld

22 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon (1973), the latter presenting an even longer list with 21 quantifiable features, many of which resemble those proposed by Greenberg.

2.2. General remarks Jarzeva (1965: 59), one of the leading typologists in Russia, argued that it is impossible to determine the type of an entire language since linguists cannot subsume the proportion of synthetic and analytic structures that exist in a particular language under one quotient or label. Therefore, the author suggests not to speak of “language types” and thus of “analytic languages” or “synthetic languages”, but of analytic or synthetic “constructions” that may be observed to a higher or lower extent in a particular language. This suggestion represents a strong rejection of the generalizing methods and the terminology used in Western linguistics at that time. Jarzeva suggests a particularistic approach according to which different levels of the system of a particular language (e.g. NP vs. VP) and different expression types of categorical information (e.g. the encoding strategy of Person vs. that of Tense) must be distinguished and subjected to a separate analysis. The formulation of generalizing statements that weep the existence of different structures in different subsystems under the carpet can be avoided only by investigating the structural types found in single domains of a language. A further point of interest is her distinction into formal and functional aspects of analytic and synthetic types of expressing categorical information. From a formal perspective, analytic structures are those in which the relation between words is expressed outside the word, i.e. in the linguistic environment or the context. From a functional perspective, analytic structures are characterized by a division of free morphemes into those which serve as indicators of basic information (i.e. which have lexical content), and those which express additional information, that is, information which modifies or expands already given (basic) information, such as auxiliaries or determiners. In spite of the rather intense research in the morphological classification of languages, two problems have remained unsolved. First, there is still no generally accepted definition of the “word” (although suggestions like “phonological word”, “grammatical word” etc. have been made) and no answer to the question of where word boundaries should be established. Secondly, only a minority of publications pays tribute to the fact that the labels “synthetic” and “analytic” cannot refer to languages or varieties of a

Language change and morphological typology 23

language as a whole, but should be used to describe the encoding strategies of single categories or the predominance of one or the other type in single domains, e.g. the NP or the VP. In view of these unsolved problems, especially the first one, the most extreme position would be to lay to rest any further operation with the terms synthetic and analytic. As Schwegler (1990: 46) argues, any classification of a language or the expression type of a particular category of a language has to operate with an ill-defined, undefined, or simply indefinable fundamental variable, the word, and must therefore be unreliable. This view may be true, but it is probably too strict. The question is not whether the classification should be used at all, but how to use it. As it has been shown, the notion of syntheticity is of no help if it refers to the structure of an entire language. One may, however, document processes of isolation of formerly synthetic structures occurring in particular domains, at least in those cases where a more or less clear segmentation of word-forms into lexical bases and affixes is possible. In the present study, the terms synthetic and analytic will refer to the encoding technique of lexical information and are applied to the field of nominal derivation only. 3. Language change and morphological typology 3.1. Sapir’s concept of ‘drift’ Sapir’s modification of the typological classification discussed above also changed the interpretation of a typological change of languages. By suggesting that languages may gradually change from one typological state towards another, Sapir introduced a dynamic conception of language types into the field of linguistic typology. The idea that the typological character of a language may be subjected to change had been proposed by Schleicher and Humboldt before. However, Sapir offered a different conception of such a change: it does not correlate with the evolutionary stage of a culture and thus with cultural progression or decline, and it is not a unidirectional, linear development, but one that follows a cycle. Languages move continuously between syntheticity and analyticity, a phenomenon for which he introduced the term ‘drift’ ([1921] 1949: 154): We must return to the concept of “drift” in language. If the historical changes that take place in a language, if the vast accumulation of minute modification which in time results in the complete remodeling of the lan-

24 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon guage, are not in essence identical with the individual variations that we note on every hand about us, if these variations are born only to die without a trace, while the equally minute, or minuter, changes that make up the drift are forever imprinted on the history of the language, are we not imputing to this history a certain mystical quality? […] The linguistic drift has direction. […] The drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some special direction. This direction may be inferred in the main from the past history of the language.

Two aspects deserve particular attention. First, Sapir suggests that the changes which induce a drift can be observed only over an extended period of time and go beyond the type of individual variation that one might observe regularly in any type of synchronic variation (e.g. sociolinguistic variation or dialectal variation). Secondly, the selection process is not random, i.e. individual changes in different domains and on different levels are not isolated phenomena, but often related to a more general, languageinternal trend that may operate in a language over centuries (“accumulation of minute modifications”). Therefore, the documentation of a typological change requires (1) the analysis of individual changes within different subsystems of a language, and (2) the consideration of an extended time span. Furthermore, Sapir’s idea of a drift implies that languages may move back and forth between analyticity and syntheticity. As he states, significant changes begin with individual variations which “are random phenomena, like the waves of the sea, moving backward and forward in purposeless flux.” (Sapir [1921] 1949: 155) However, although the changes may start from either structural type, “the linguistic drift has direction” (idem). The goal of this move and the question of why speakers of different generations follow a particular tendency has, however, remained an open question and may perhaps not be answered at all since a typological change starts with minute changes on different linguistic levels that are unrelated in the beginning. The idea of a ‘drift’, i.e. a global change of the typological shape of a languages, implies that a change of encoding strategies of categorical information is not necessarily restricted to the encoding of grammatical information, i.e. to the domain of inflection, but may also occur with the encoding of lexical information, which has rarely been the subject of study, at least with respect to English.

Language change and morphological typology 25

3.2. Dixon’s typological clock One model that accounts for the directional and continuous change of the typological shape of languages is Dixon’s (1997) Typological Cycle or Clock, which forms be the background against which the typological development of the English language is investigated here. The idea of the model is that languages move along a “cycle of change”, by which a fusional language may develop into an isolating one, an isolating language may become agglutinating, an agglutinating language may move towards a fusional type, and so on (Dixon 1997: 42): As languages change over time, they tend – very roughly – to move around a typological circle: isolating to agglutinating, to fusional, back to isolating, and so on. If we place the isolating type at the four o’clock position, agglutinating at eight o’clock and fusional at twelve o’clock, around a clock-face, it is possible to describe recent movements in various language families. Proto-Indo-European was at about twelve o’clock but modern branches of the family have moved, at different rates, towards amore isolating position (some to one or two o’clock, others toward three o’clock). Early Chinese is thought to have been at about three o’clock, Classical Chinese was a fairly pure isolating type at four o’clock, while Modern Chinese languages are acquiring a mildly agglutinating structure, towards five o’clock. Proto-Dravidian was on the isolating side of agglutinating, at about seven o’clock, and modern Dravidian languages have moved around the cycle towards nine o’clock. Proto Finno-Ugric may have been at around nine o’clock, with modern languages moving to ten or eleven o’clock...

The development from one language type to another may thus start at any point, but the stages are passed through clockwise only. The change from fusion to isolation is caused by morphological simplification, i.e. by the loss of morphological material, and isolation, i.e. the separation of the bundle of grammatical information fused into one morpheme and the distribution of bits of information over several distinct, autonomous elements. An isolating language may develop into the agglutinating type through morphological amalgamation, which is the combination of separate items into complex units, each morpheme indicating one particular bit of information. Finally, an agglutinating language may become fusional through augmentation, which is the grammaticalization of words into affixes, and fusion, which is the merger of two or more bits of information into one morpheme. In this sense, agglutination seems to be “yesterday’s analytism” (Plungian 2001: 677) as much as fusion seems to be yesterday’s agglutination and

26 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon analytism to be yesterday’s syntheticism. Some languages have passed though all stages, i.e. they have completed the circle within thousands of years of language development. The most prominent examples are Classical Egypt, which over a period of 3,000 years completed the full cycle (Hodge 1970), and the Uralic languages (Tauli 1966). At first sight, the change from one type to another seems to be triggered or at least related to purely phonological processes by which bound morphemes, i.e. the exponents of morphosyntactic or lexical categories, are either eliminated (shift towards analyticity), generated by means of phonological reduction of free elements (shift towards agglutination), agglutinated, or fused into one form (shift towards fusion). It is, however, still unclear whether these phonological processes are the cause or the consequence of changes on the morphological level. As Schwegler (1990: 179) points out, while “it is clear that phonological weakening is a possible consequence of synthesis, it is clearly not the driving force behind the analytic/synthetic cycle.” It is also debatable whether typological changes are induced by language-external factors, i.e. language contact, or whether they are language-internally conditioned, or both. An explanation that is much closer to the empirical data found in historical linguistics than the purely phonological one is that the change of the morphological type of a language is induced by systematic changes occurring on different linguistic levels (phonology, morphology, syntax), which operate independently at first, but over time begin to interact with each other, thus producing a cumulative effect (Kastovsky 2006a, 2006b). Phonological changes do indeed often carry over to the morphological level and to syntax, but the other direction is also possible: morphological changes may induce changes on the phonological level. In this sense, morphological changes are not, as it is often claimed, automatically the result of phonological changes, such as prosodic changes which, in the case of English, led to a weakening of final segments, but may precede phonological ones. The loss of inflections in English, for instance, at least that with nouns, might be related to stressshift and a newly emerging prosodic pattern according to which the main word-stress falls on the initial syllable. However, this does not explain why the inflection of determiners, which inflected inherently in OE, was lost (e.g. æt [nominative, accusative] – æs [genitive] – æm [dative] – y [instrumental]) and why the entire system of the demonstrative pronouns collapsed and was restructured during the Middle English period (Millar 2000). Likewise, processes of isolation, by which categories like Case and Number came to be indicated not by means of a fusional morpheme, but in

Language change and morphological typology 27

different places in the NP in most of the Germanic languages, cannot be attributed to changes on the phonological level only (cf. Braunmüller 1994). The mechanisms of the shift around the clock are thus more likely to be determined by individual changes occurring on single linguistic levels (phonology, morphology, syntax), which operate independently at first, but over time begin to interact with each other, thus producing a cumulative effect. The final result is a systematic, directional change of the overall typological shape of a language, by which speakers come to select those variables that conform better to the emerging new language type. In this sense, the typological change of a language cannot be attributed to one ultimate factor that induced the long-range global linguistic change. Rather, it is the result of an accumulation of several “local” changes that assume directionality over time and motivate speakers to choose one variant over another, namely those variants that are in accordance with the new type. Some concrete examples for the case of English will be provided in Ch. 11.

3.3. Typological changes in IE languages A typological shift in the domain of grammar has been described for several languages, but mostly the descriptions refer to a language as a whole and not to the structural type that predominates in single domains (e.g. NP vs. VP, word-formation vs. grammar, or the expression of different categories like Case, Person or Number). Furthermore, derivation is usually not investigated and often not even mentioned in such diachronic typological studies. Among the various IE languages for which a shift from syntheticity to analyticity has been attested it is often only the noun phrase which became predominantly analytic (e.g. Dardel and Wuest 1993; Hall 1980; Gaeng 1984, 1990), Bulgarian (Sobolev 1991; Karpov 2004) and Macedonian (Sobolev 1991), spoken Serbian (Hinrichs 2000), most of the Germanic languages (e.g. Skrzypek 2005 for Swedish), Welsh (Tristram 2004; Parina 2006) and Breton (Tristram 2009). Analytic tendencies were observed even in Russian (Panov 1968; Valgina 2003: 155165).12 However, the encoding techniques occurring in the verb phrase are more difficult to determine. In some of these languages the expression of verbal categories remained predominantly synthetic (e.g. Welsh, where inflectional endings are still in use to distinguish between the categories Person [4 persons: 1–3, impersonal], Number [2 numbers: sg, pl], Tense [3 tenses: present, past, pluperfect] and Mood [2 moods: indicative, subjunctive]), in others one

28 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon may observe a mixture of partly analytic, partly synthetic strategies (e.g. the Romance languages, in which the expression of verbal categories like the perfect or the conditional is partly synthetic, partly analytic, whereas that of the present or imperfect is synthetic: he habl-ado vs. habl-aba). The typological development of English is remarkable in this respect as it underwent a shift from predominantly synthetic encoding types of grammatical information towards analytic ones in both the noun phrase and the verb phrase (Tristram 2002; Siemund 2004) and thus developed into one of the most analytic languages of all IE languages. Together with Welsh and Breton, English forms the atlantic, western end of an east-west continuum of the IE languages from more synthetic towards more analytic languages (Tristram 2009). This continuum results from the gradual development of all IE languages towards analyticity, which occurred and is still occurring with various speeds and with different intensity in the single languages, so that at present they have arrived at different stages on the continuum. The fact that all IE languages started off as synthetic languages is based on the reconstruction of Proto-IE, the common ancestor language, in which almost all grammatical categories were expressed by means of synthetic structures.13 All IE languages have reduced the number of morphologically marked categories, some being lost in most of these languages (e.g. the dual, aorist), others having undergone fusion (e.g. syncretism of several case functions), which resulted in large differences in the number of morphologically marked categories among the IE languages (e.g. seven morphologically marked cases in Lithuanian vs. none in Welsh). A precise description of the typological change in the lexical domain of these languages has rarely been the subject of study and is therefore difficult to summarize. A possible complication to Dixon’s typological clock is the fact that often one and the same category may be expressed by means of two typologically distinct structures coexisting in the same period. The classical example is the expression of the future in Spanish, Portuguese and French, which may be synthetic (fusional) or analytic, the latter being more dominant in spoken language: SPA POR FRE

synthetic hablar-é falar-ei je parler-ais

analytic voy a hablar vou a falar je vais a parler

Language change and morphological typology 29

This example is often used to illustrate that sometimes the way of expressing single categories varies from one period to another, floating back and forth between synthetic and analytic encoding strategies without any apparent reason (Pulgram 1963; Schwegler 1990: 177), as the historical development of the future in the Romance languages suggests: *ama bho amabo amare habeo > amare he amaré voy a amar

analytic synthetic analytic synthetic analytic

The example illustrates that in some domains typological changes may move back and forth between two stages only. The earliest structure of the expression of the future was apparently analytic (*ama bho ‘I am to love’), then became synthetic in Classical Latin (amabo ‘I will love’), changed to analytic again in Vulgar Latin (amare habeo > amare he), became synthetic in Spanish (amaré) and currently tends to be expressed by means of analytic constructions in spoken Spanish (voy a amar).14 What makes it difficult to recognize the principle underlying the rhythmic development of encoding types is that obviously none of the two structures is preferred over the other one from a cognitive perspective since each of them implies complexity on a different level. One might argue that analytic constructions are more transparent since words remain unmodified and each morpheme tends to indicate one meaning. Pulgram (1963: 40), for instance, claims that analytic forms exhibit greater explicitness, emphasis, and preciseness. Similarly, Geisler (1982) argues that the decoding of synthetic structures is cognitively more difficult than that of analytic ones since the first operate with polyfunctional morphemes in which, for reasons of economy, a maximal amount of information is represented by a minimal amount of phonic matter. The advantage thus lies only on the side of the speaker, since the segmentation process required by the hearer is rather complex. However, a need for transparency that triggers the development of more analytic structures can be assumed only in situations of language contact where communication with non-native speakers (i.e. outgroup members) must often be facilitated. Furthermore, a reduction of complexity on the morphological level, which results from the disuse of bound morphemes to encode grammatical or lexical information, leads to more complexity on the syntactic level, and it may be doubted that the complexity in the latter case is cognitively mastered in an easier way than complexity on the morphological

30 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon level. It also remains unclear why the shift often affects the expression of some particular categories only, such as that of future tenses, but leaves the expression of other concepts, e.g. the imperfect, structurally unaffected, as it may be observed for the development of the Romance languages from early Latin on. From a general, language systemic perspective it is therefore unclear what exactly the advantage of a synthetic or analytic expression is. The lack of a clear advantage may explain why language development is not telic in this respect, but circular. The idea of language change as a circular process implies that over time languages change the encoding type of categorical information into a predictable direction and that a particular language type is only a temporary stage that languages pass through in their historical development. In this sense, languages are in a continuous process of transition from one state to another. As Croft (1990: 205) states, the conception of language development in terms of transitional stages implies that language change is characterized by connectivity: a language can change from any type to another, but the old and the new type are connected in the sense that a particular new type (e.g. agglutination) evolves from the respective preceding one (isolation). Thus, a typological change is directional (but not telic): in order to arrive from a fusional to an agglutinating state, a language must go through a stage of isolation and cannot change directly towards agglutination. The reason is that agglutination arises from the amalgamation of formerly isolated elements. If the change was not directional and connective, languages would constitute autonomous types and could enter any new stage from any other, preceding one, by which the direction of the change became entirely arbitrary. In this sense, language development is a one-way historical connection between the actual stage of language development, a preceding one and a subsequent one. It should be considered that there are no ideal types, i.e. most languages in the world will fall between two types rather than exactly representing one of the three prototypical language types. Languages display much internal variation on the parameter of syntheticity, which means that synchronic generalizations should be restricted to analyses of single structures and components of a language only, as suggested by Jarzeva (1965). Furthermore, the term language itself is an idealization since a single language consists of several geographically, socially and stylistically determined varieties, which all may exhibit different structural properties in different domains.

The structural types of encoding lexical information 31

The assumption of a circular development of morphological states and of the existence of different intermediate stages between the three prototypical language types implies that the comparison of the development of inflection and derivation in English should not only focus on the question of whether both components took the same direction, but also whether they arrived at the same stage. Furthermore, it stands to reason whether or not the two components underwent the change towards analyticity with the same speed and during the same historical period/s. 4. The structural types of encoding lexical information As mentioned above, morphological typology is based on two parameters: the place of encoding grammatical/lexical information (synthetic: on the lexical base, analytic: outside the base) and the technique (fusional, isolating, agglutinating, incorporating, introflecting). These parameters, which have been used almost exclusively to describe the marking of grammatical information (though not always, see e.g. Greenberg’s ([1954] 1960) derivation index), can, with some modifications, also be used to describe the encoding techniques of lexical information that predominate in a language. This approach, however, presupposes a distinction between full lexical meaning, which is represented by a lexical base, and categorical lexical meaning, which is typically represented by affixes (e.g. -ness: Abstract, -er: Agent) (Gak 1991). As with inflection, in derivation “synthetic” means that information is indicated word-internally (by means of affixes), whereas the term “analytic” refers to word-external indication. With respect to the technique of encoding lexical information, one may distinguish five formal types: (1) fusional: the combination of lexical morphemes (affixes, base forms) includes a formal change of one or more of the morphemes involved so that the resulting word-form is not merely a combination of different morphemes, but a new formal unit (e.g. suffixed forms with Umlaut in Germanic when umlaut was still productive, fleon ‘to flee’ – flyht ‘flight’), i.e. presence of base or affix alternations15 (2) isolating: lexical information, or part of it, is expressed word externally (e.g. a drive-in) (3) agglutinating: lexical categorical information is indicated on the lexical base without causing a formal alteration of the base (e.g. un-friendli-ness)

32 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon (4) incorporating: lexical meanings, i.e. several types of full meaning, are incorporated into one word-form (e.g. to windowshop, to consumertest, to hullwalk, to thought-read) (5) intromodifying: lexical information is indicated by means of an insertion of different sounds (usually vowels) into a (usually consonantal) skeleton according to specific patterns (e.g. Arab, Hebrew).16

The first three types will be discussed below, the latter two will be ignored since they are irrelevant for a documentation of the typological changes that occurred in the English lexicon during the OE and early ME period. 4.1. Analytic encoding techniques For the illustration of what syntheticity and analyticity in the domain of the lexicon are we may start with a formal definition of the term analyticity as given by the Russian linguist Gak (1990: 31) in the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary: Analyticity is a structural feature that is characterized by the isolated expression of lexical information on the one hand, and additional grammatical or word-forming meaning on the other. (my translation A.H.)

Gak distinguishes three types of analytic constructions: analytic constructions on the morphological level, analytic constructions on the syntactic level, and lexical analytic constructions. Analytic constructions on the morphological level represent a combination of elements which all express a particular morphological category, such as Tense, Mood, the comparative etc. Syntactically analytic constructions represent a unit of several elements that all form one particular constituent of a sentence (e.g. ‘a person from Berlin’ vs. Berlin-er). Lexical analytic constructions are forms in which word-formation meanings, that is, abstract categorical meanings, are expressed outside the lexical base (e.g. direction, as in PDE to go out vs. GER raus-gehen, or the diminutive, as in ‘small house’ vs. kitchen-ette). Based on these criteria, analyticity in the lexicon may, in very general terms, be conceived of as the split of a once complex morphological unit into several autonomous ones, as Hinrichs and Hinrichs (1995: 313) suggest. Thereby, the new structure may be a combination of lexemes and thus still be a lexical unit, or a syntactic unit, in which case it would not be part of the lexicon, but still relevant for our purpose since it is indicative of a loss of morphologically complex units. In the first case lexical meaning and modify-

The structural types of encoding lexical information 33

ing, categorical meaning are expressed separately by means of independent morphemes, e.g. a full verb and a postposed adverb or a noun and a postposed preposition, as in passer-by where the derived lexical meaning is expressed by means of two autonomous units (of which one includes a suffix). The resulting structure is a combination of a lexical element with full lexical meaning, i.e. the semantic core, with another lexical element indicating more abstract, categorical meaning. In this sense, the two units do not have the same status: the “auxiliary” element modifies the lexical meaning of the element that constitutes the semantic core and is therefore subordinated to it. However, in many cases a formerly synthetic form can be expressed only by means of a periphrasis at a later stage of language development. Consider the following examples from Old English and their PDE correspondences: (1)

Techniques of encoding of lexical information (OE – PDE) a.

synthetic OE ymb-sitt-end

b. c.

OE nor-an, feorr-an OE heng-en, hæf-en

d.

OE in-/%t-/ofer-gang

analytic PDE ‘those/s.o. sitting around (some place/person)’ PDE ‘from the north, from far’ PDE ‘that on which anyone is hung’, ‘that which one possesses’ PDE ø (entrance, exit)

In 1 (a) the morphologically complex structure (prefix + lexical stem + suffix) can be expressed by means of a syntagma only in PDE, involving a subject, a participle form of the verb, and the preposition around, which replaces the OE prefix ymb-. One may find other, morphologically equivalent forms in PDE like by-stand-er, but these forms are clearly a minority in the English lexicon since the use of prepositions in prefix-position is highly restricted: synthetic forms are possible only with deverbal adjectival or nominal derivatives (outgoing, income) in PDE, but such formations are usually lexicalized. Some denominal verbs also allow for a synthetic encoding of e.g. path (outsource), but their number is very low. Thus, synthetic encoding techniques of e.g. locative information are not a regular option in PDE, as it was the case in OE (e.g. *to aroundsit, *to throughdrive, but OE ymbsittan, urhfaran and the respective derivatives). This change is certainly related to the loss of most of the prefixes of English and the concomitant generation of post-particle structures, as described by Hiltunen

34 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon (1983). Example (1b) illustrates the change of the expression of the concept Source from OE to PDE. In OE, it was expressed by means of the suffix -an (originally a case marker) attached to an adverb of location, as in onan ‘from there’, feorran ‘from far’ or noran ‘from the north’. After the loss of the suffix in late OE or, to be more precise, after the loss of all wordforms with this suffix, the concept of Source came to be expressed in an analytic way only, i.e. by means of a preposition and an adverb as a substitute for a suffixed locative adverb (OE noran > PDE from the north, feorran > PDE from far). In 1 (c) the construction ‘verb + -en’, which could be used to derive nouns denoting objects, for instance, has no synthetic counterpart in PDE. In PDE, equivalent structures like paint-ing or build-ing exist, but the number of affixation processes that are used to derive nouns denoting objects are much more limited. Finally, there is no synthetic equivalent to the OE nouns in (1d), for which loan words on a Latinate basis are used in PDE (entrance, exit, passage). The underlying verbs (ingn, utgn) were formed with a prefix that could also occur as a particle and be detached from the verbal base. However, in PDE only analytic forms are possible (go in/out). One might argue that typologically identical structures to those in (1d) do exist in PDE, e.g. outlet, inlet or income, but such forms are lexicalized and can be listed, i.e. they do not represent a productive typological pattern that can be applied regularly, as in OE (comp. OE ymbhwyrft ‘orbit’ – lit. ‘aroundmove’, ofsla ‘slaughter’ – lit. ‘apart-/awayhit’, forhycge ‘disdain’ – lit. ‘NEG-think’, t#-brye ‘a breaking apart’ – lit. ‘away/apartbreak’). The fact that the structures indicated in (1a–d) tend to have only analytic equivalents in PDE shows that one cannot speak of “analytic wordformation” here because it is not the derivation of new lexemes that became analytic, but the encoding strategy of particular types of lexical categorical information. We will therefore speak of the “typological shift of the encoding of lexical information”, even though this expression might appear somewhat long-winded. Two different types of analytic constructions should be distinguished. In the case of combinations of free morphemes (of the type a drive-in, passer-by) we may speak of ‘analytic lexical units’ or ‘analytic lexemes’. These terms were suggested by Jazeva (1965: 62) and later used by Kryuchkova (2006) to refer to word-forms in which the combination of lexical morphemes is fixed and in which the more abstract, categorical lexical meaning (e.g. location, direction) of the lexical unit is expressed by means of a free morpheme attached to another lexeme with full lexical meaning. On the one hand, these lexemes do not exhibit a com-

The structural types of encoding lexical information 35

bination of a lexical base and an affix, which is why we cannot speak of derivatives, on the other hand, these formations lack the determinantdeterminatum structure that characterizes compounds. Thus, analytic lexemes occupy a position between compounds and derivatives. This view implies that such formations are not the result of zero-derivation since the incorporation of a particle into a lexical unit is different from the mere change of word-class of the type to drink – drink. The second type, noncombined structures, are more syntactic in character and thus outside the lexicon, i.e. in this case the indication of lexical information was shifted entirely to the syntactic level. What both types of constructions have in common is that they represent a combination of single, autonomous units that are used to create new semantic units out of existing ones. As a result, lexical content is not indicated on the lexical base itself or by means of a formal change of the lexical stem, but through independent elements surrounding the lexical base. A typological difference in the encoding of particular types of categorical information may not only be found between different stages of the same language but, of course, also between different languages. Consider the following examples from German (GER) and PDE: (2)

Techniques of encoding lexical information (GER – PDE) a. b. c.

synthetic GER los-singen GER rum-heulen GER Häus-chen

analytic PDE to start to sing PDE to wheep (repeatedly) PDE small house

In German, inchoative (2a) or iterative meanings (2b) can be expressed by means of prefixes (los-, rum-), whose use has been increasing during the past decades and which may be attached to virtually any verb to indicate Aktionsart, except for stative verbs. In English, however, only a periphrastic construction with the verb to start as a modifier of the full verb can be used to indicate inchoativity, or a preposition/adverb for iterativity (repetition). While in German the position of the particles (los-, rum-) varies in the sense that they can occur as prefixes or as free particles in a sentence, the use of particles as prefixes is severely restricted in English. Another example is the expression of diminutivity (2c), which is synthetic in German (and in many other languages, e.g. Spanish [-ito/-ita, -iño], Russian [-ka]), but predominantly analytic in English. Cases like kitchen-ette or book-let, which express the concept of ‘small in size’, exist, but they are

36 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon not productive in the sense that the suffixes may be attached to any noun denoting an object, as it is the case with German -chen (which alternates with -lein). Note, again, that the corresponding structure in English is a syntactic unit and not a lexicalized one, i.e. not an ‘analytic lexeme’. After these considerations, the concept of ‘analytic encoding of lexical information’ can be formulated as follows: Analytic encoding techniques of lexical information The encoding strategy of lexical information is analytic if a lexical base is modified semantically or morphologically not through a change of the lexical stem or an extension of its form by means of bound morphemes, but outside the base. The base may either be part of a syntactic unit that replaces formerly synthetic structures, or enter into a fixed combination with another morphological element that has an independent status, e.g. an adverb (e.g. a stowaway) or a preposition (a drive-in).

Since lexical bases tend to occur in isolation in analytic languages, i.e. as autonomous units, analytic encoding strategies of lexical information can predominate in languages with word-based morphology only and not in those with root- or stem-based morphology. In stem-based morphology, lexemes occur as stems, which are abstract units that require morphological modification (attachment of inflectional and, optionally, derivational affixes) in order to be used as autonomous units (“words”). In word-based morphology, however, additional morphemes do not have to be attached to lexical bases in order to convert them into units susceptible of syntactic transposition. In this sense, the term isolation does not only refer to the place of encoding lexical information (expression of meaning components by means of several autonomous items outside the lexical base), but also to the morphological form of the lexical base itself. The morpheme boundary of lexical bases must be isolated in the sense that additional marking is possible, but not necessary. Bound lexical bases (e.g. histor-, navig-, horr-) have no isolated morpheme boundaries because they need to be completed by means of other morphemes in order to become autonomous units. A shift from a stem-based towards a word-based language is thus the precondition for linguistic units to occur in isolation. The fact that such a shift occurred in English morphology on a native basis (Kastovsky 2006a, 2006b) can be taken as a first indicator for a typological change into the direction of isolating encoding techniques in both grammar and the lexicon.

The structural types of encoding lexical information 37

4.2. Synthetic encoding techniques: Agglutination and Fusion A synthetic structure is characterized by the attachment of bound morphemes to lexical bases (which may have the morphological status of roots, stems or words) in order to indicate categorical information. Thus, a synthetic structure presupposes the existence of an inventory of morphological exponents indicating particular kinds of information, and/or processes by which the form of the base is changed according to particular principles (e.g. the IE ablaut patterns) so that the new form is equipped with a particular grammatical or lexical meaning. Synthetic encoding strategies in the lexicon differ with respect to the shape of the morpheme boundary and the variability of the morphological form of bound morphemes, which requires a subdivision into a fusional and an agglutinating type. A synthetic strategy of encoding lexical information is agglutinating if the bound morphemes that are used to modify the meaning of lexical bases constitute a sequence where each of the morphemes is clearly segmentable from a formal and a semantic perspective. The combination of different morphemes does not involve any change of their form, i.e. instances of fusion at the morpheme boundary and alternation of morphemes (base alternation and suffix alternation) tend not occur in agglutinating languages. The term fusional will be used here to refer to derivational forms which exhibit formal variation and for which a clear-cut segmentation of morphemes is not possible. In this sense, the definition of agglutinating and fusional differs somewhat from those used for the description of encoding techniques in the grammatical domain. In inflection, fusion refers to the indication of more than one grammatical category by means of one formal marker. Here, the term will be used to distinguish two types of formations: those in which affixation processes are accompanied by a formal change of the base and/or an affix, and those where such alternations tend to be absent (e.g. PDE derivation with native elements). Consider the following examples and the structural differences between affixation in stem-variant and in stem-invariant morphology ('#' marks a closed morpheme boundary, i.e. the morpheme does not undergo any kind of formal change): (3)

Fusional vs. agglutinating encoding techniques of lexical information a. fusional: stem-variability

OE fleog-(-an) ‘fly’ – flyh-(-t) ‘flight’, s-on ‘to see’ – sih-t ‘sight’, SPA libre ‘free’ – liber-dad ‘freedom’, volv-er ‘to return’ –
vuel-ta ‘return’

38 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon b. agglutinating: invariance

PDE friend# – friend#-ly# – un-#friend#-li#-ness#

In (3b) the attachment of additional affixes results in a sequence of invariant, clearly separable morphemes, as it is typical for agglutinating languages. In languages in which the form of lexical bases is variable, however, an affixation process may trigger a change of the phonological and/or morphological form of the lexical base (see 3a), depending on the type of factor that conditions the change (e.g. i-umlaut, base allomorphy, ablaut). Furthermore, instances of fusion at the morpheme boundary, such as changes of the final consonant or insertion of linking consonants or vowels, occur frequently, as in OE ag-an ‘to own’ – æh-t ‘possession’ or SPA alt-o ‘high’ – alt-i-tud ‘height’. The outcome of the process is a new, morphologically complex formal unit in which different morphemes fuse into each other and one or both of the morphemes involved (lexical base and/or affix) change their formal shape. This way, the single morphological components cannot be segmented in a clear-cut way. Formal alternation of the base is typical for root- or stem-based morphology, although there are also languages with stem-morphology in which lexical stems are invariant. It is, however, very untypical for languages with word-based morphology, i.e. languages in which lexical bases are autonomous units and thus do not require additional morphemes in order to become independent syntactic units (“words”). The distinction between fusional and agglutinating techniques of deriving new words refers to the morphological structure of the derivative. A formal definition of the agglutinating type of indicating lexical information is the following: Synthetic encoding of lexical information: The agglutinating type A synthetic strategy of encoding lexical information is agglutinating if bound morphemes are used to modify the meaning of lexical bases and if the resulting structure is a sequence of morphemes, each of which has a lexical meaning. At least one of these morphemes constitutes the lexical core, i.e. it is a morpheme with word-status carrying full lexical meaning, whereas other morphemes indicate more abstract, categorical information and occur as bound or free forms attached to the lexical core. The resulting complex word-form is clearly segmentable from a formal and a semantic perspective: each of the morphemes carries one clearly segmentable seme, and the morpheme boundaries remain clearly separated. The combination of different morphemes does not involve any change of their form.

The structural types of encoding lexical information 39

Agglutinating structures differ from fusional ones with respect to the degree of autonomy of affixes. As Plungian (2001: 674) suggests, one may observe “a greater autonomy of morphemes in agglutinating languages.” The autonomy derives from the fact that in agglutinating languages affixes have greater freedom concerning their combinability, which is reflected in the occurrence of one and the same affix with stems of different word classes. Such a broad combinability is typical also for analytic languages, from which agglutinating structures tend to arise: here, single autonomous units, such as auxiliaries, prepositions or adverbs, may be combined rather freely with words of different classes and may themselves exhibit properties of different word classes, depending on their use. In other words, lexical items are flexible with respect to word-class membership. Consider the use of up or down, which may be used as prepositions, adverbs, or verbs in PDE, and the general flexibility of English lexemes with respect to wordclass, which facilitates conversion into different directions. This flexibility with respect to word class affiliation and the combinatory autonomy of linguistic units correlates with grammatical autonomy of morphological units in agglutinating languages. In agglutinating languages derivational morphemes exhibit more inflection-like properties. The similarity refers to the regularity of use and the type of category indicated by bound morphemes. Thus, the rigid distinction between inflectional and derivational affixes, which is usually tested with a set of criteria (e.g. generality, regularity of use), is often absent in agglutinating languages (Plungian 2001: 676): morphemes with predominantly lexical information and those with predominantly grammatical information may both exhibit general and regular use. Secondly, in agglutinating languages inflectional morphemes tend to convey also derivational meaning and often occur within rather than outside derived forms, and derivational markers may be used to indicate meanings that are usually classified as inflectional. In other words, the boundary between prototypical inflection and derivation is very weak. In this sense, agglutinating languages occupy a position between isolating and fusional languages, as it is predicted by Dixon’s typological cycle. On the one hand, the grammatical system found in agglutinating languages is closer to analyticity and the isolating language type in the sense that words are flexible with respect to their syntactic properties (no strict membership to particular word-classes). On the other hand, the morphological structure of words is more similar to that found in fusional languages in the sense that bound morphemes are attached to base forms in order to indicate

40 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon particular types of categorical meaning. The difference lies in the functional weight of these morphemes, which may indicate more than one bit of categorical information in fusional languages (this property is important only for inflection), and in the transparency of morpheme boundaries. With the fusional type a linear segmentation of semantically or grammatically complex word-forms is problematic. Partial fusion of lexical bases and affixes occurs in forms where the stem changes its form as a result of phonological properties of the affix attached to it, as in OE lang ‘long’ – length (i-umlaut triggered by the suffix, -th > *-iu), sc%fan ‘to shove, push’ – scyfel ‘shovel’ (-el < *-il), or GER rot ‘red’ – Röte ‘redness’ (nominalization of the adjective rot, OHG red + -e < *-î) or Löffel ‘spoon’, deriving from OHG laffen ‘to slurp’ (-el < *-(i)lo), where the base verb was lost. These two types are opposed to non-fusional, i.e. agglutinating structures, where phonological or morphological variation of the base form and/or affixes is rare and where stems and affixes may clearly be separated. In this sense, the fusional type of a synthetic encoding of lexical information can defined as follows: Synthetic encoding of lexical information: The fusional type A synthetic strategy of encoding lexical information corresponds to the fusional type when it is characterized by a change of the lexical base and/or an affix attached to it, i.e. by a formal change of any of the morphological constituents involved in a complex word-form. In these cases, the resulting complex word-form is more than a sequence of different discrete morphemes, namely a new phonological unit from which the single morphological components cannot be segmented in a clear-cut way.

Fusional structures do not only involve changes of the vocalic nucleus of the base, but also regular changes on the morpheme boundary and phonological (suprasegmental) changes induced by a suffixation process. In this sense, fusional techniques include the following processes: (1) suprasegmental changes, by which the derivative is assigned a stress pattern that differs from that of the base (see 4a), (2) phonological changes on the morpheme boundary, i.e. changes which affect the quality of the final consonant of a base form, such as palatalization or velar softening (see 4b), or (3) morphological changes involving changes both on the morpheme boundary and within the lexical base (4c).

The structural types of encoding lexical information 41 (4)

Changes of the lexical base induced by synthetic marking of lexical categories/fusional type: a.

Suprasegmental changes SPA co'mer ‘to eat’ libe'rar ‘to free’ PDE re'fer

come'dor ‘refectory’ libera'ción ‘liberation’ 'reference17

b.

Changes on the morpheme boundary RUS graniza ‘frontier’ o-granich-enie ‘limitation’ vostorg ‘passion’ vostorzh-enny ‘passionate’ vostok ‘east’ vostoch-ny ‘eastern’ PDE produce /s/ produc-tion /k/ politics /k/ politic-ian // soft /t/ soft-en (ø)18

c.

Changes within the lexical base RUS voskhodit' ‘to rise’ SPA sonreír ‘to smile’

voskhozhd-enie ‘rise’ sonris-a ‘a smile’

In all these cases, the lexical base and the affix fuse into a new formal unit, which is more than the mere accumulation of invariant morphemes. Furthermore, affixes may exhibit alternation as well, thus assimilating to the phonological properties of the lexical base and facilitating fusion with it. This phenomenon is accounted for by Alpatov (1985), who based his classification of fusional vs. agglutinating languages on the type of affixes used in different languages (although he refers to inflectional morphemes only). Some affixes are attached to lexical bases by means of fusion, i.e. they have variants that are not predictable phonologically, but which are chosen by different types of stems.19 Affixes that exhibit such formal variation induce “boundary cohesion effects”, by which the degree of fusion between base and affix is higher than it is with word-forms that involve a suffix with invariant forms. Alpatov labels such affixes cohesive affixes. Affixes that do not undergo phonologically unmotivated variation are called noncohesive affixes, and predominate in agglutinating languages. This distinction between two types of affixes is, as the author suggests, more significant for determining the degree of fusion of a language than using the traditional criteria since it places emphasis on the morphological structure of the resulting word-form. In this sense, fusion does not refer to the functional load of affixes, but also to formal criteria, namely the degree of cohesion between affix and base and the existence of formal variation of morphemes.

42 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon 5. The status of zero-derivation: synthetic or analytic? The last phenomenon to be discussed in this chapter is zero-derivation, i.e. the phonologically empty realization of an otherwise overtly expressed content. The question is whether the use of an element with a lexical content that lacks a phonic form should be interpreted as a synthetic or an analytic structure. Furthermore, since the terms ‘zero-derivation’ and ‘conversion’ are often used as synonyms, the question is whether any difference should be established between them. Zero-derivation will be defined here in Marchand’s (1969: 360) terms as the use of an exponent of functional transposition and semantic content that is phonically unmarked. The exponent is understood to be present in content through the association with other derivatives where the element of content has a counterpart that is overtly expressed. The existence of a parallel processes with overtly marked derivatives is the main criterion for the assumption of a zero morpheme: a zero morpheme may be assumed only when, as Marchand (1969: 360) states, “zero sometimes alternates with an overt sign in other cases”. The requirement of existing parallel formations with overt marking as the decisive criterion for the assumption of a zero morpheme is related to the basic property of a linguistic sign to relate a particular expression to a particular content. If zero is assumed to be sign it must have a semantic content, but it can only have one if this content is matched by any phonic form indicating the same content in other contexts. In this sense, the existence of a zero-morpheme presupposes the existence of suffixes in general: zero-morphemes may be assumed only in those languages that operate with affixes so that an opposition of non-affixed word-forms with affixed ones is possible. A zero-derived noun thus represents a morphologically complex structure in which a base word is modified by a morphological element that is not spelled out. Therefore, zeroderivation can be classified as synthetic in those cases where parallel formations with overt markers indicating the same conceptual category exist. However, a different analysis has to be carried out when categorical information is not expressed productively in a morphological way. The general absence of morphological marking of word-class and categorical information in languages with predominantly analytic encoding strategies suggests that the use of two formally identical lexical items with different, but related meanings in two different syntactic positions should be interpreted as mere syntactic conversion, since a hypothetical zero morpheme does not parallel overt marking.

A typological profile of Old English 43

6. A typological profile of Old English After the discussion of different morphological types from the perspective of word-formation, a brief typological profile of OE will be provided in order to define the point of departure of the present study. OE was a predominantly synthetic language according to the parameter of internal complexity of grammatical words, and a fusional language concerning the degree of transparency of morphological boundaries between the morphemes within a word. This holds at least for the West-Saxon standard. The Northern dialects exhibited instances of isolation in the NP with respect to grammatical information already in the tenth century: case marking and the assignment of grammatical gender became irregular, above all with demonstrative pronouns. During the centuries following this trend spread southwards, affecting all dialects, and surfaced in writing in the Middle English period. Inflectional and derivational morphology formed two independent domains. Only three suffixes represented both inflectional and derivational meanings: -END (marker of the present participle and suffix to derive deverbal nouns denoting persons), -ED and -EN (both markers of the past tense and suffixes used to derive deverbal adjectives). Judging from the text sources, OE operated on the basis of a relatively rich inventory of derivational morphemes, but it has remained unclear to which extent the various nominal suffixes were indeed used for the derivation of new nouns. Derivational processes in OE could be categorychanging (e.g. deverbal nouns with -ERE, -EL) or category-preserving (e.g. denominal formations with -ERE [bocere ‘writer’], -HAD or -SCIPE). Most of the nominalizing suffixes were deverbal suffixes, i.e. they selected verbal bases only. Some were attached to adjectival bases (e.g. -NESS, -SCIPE), some to nominal bases, and two also to prepositions (-D in inno ‘inner part of the body, stomache’, -EL in yrhel ‘hole’), but this is an exception. Nouns could also be derived from a verb phrase consisting of a verb and its object by reversing the order of the verb and the object. The process was productive with -ERE, -END and -NESS, e.g. hornblawere ‘horn player’. OE showed a rather low predictability with respect to specific nominalization processes, i.e. there is no general way to predict the form of e.g. an abstract or an action noun from the form of the lexical base. Denominal abstract nouns denoting a state characteristic for a particular type of person, for instance, could be derived e.g. with -DOM (owd#m ‘servitude/state of being a servant’), but also with -HAD (cildhad ‘childhood/state of being a child’). Deverbal nouns denoting persons could be derived with e.g. -END,

44 Syntheticity and analyticity in the lexicon -ERE or -EL, and objects used for perfoming an action could be derived with e.g. -EL (stricel ‘teat’) or -EN (hengen ‘that on which someone is hung’). With respect to the morphological status of lexical bases, OE was basically a stem-based language. This holds at least for verbs and for strong feminine nouns, where all forms had an inflectional ending and no unmarked forms existed in the paradigms. Therefore, derivation based on verbs and strong feminine nouns was stem-based, e.g. eht- (eht-an ‘to persecute’, eht-nyss-INFL ‘persecution’, eht-er-INFL ‘persecutor’). However, there were also unmarked base-forms in nominative and accusative contexts, particularly with nouns of the numerically dominant a-stem class (strong masculine and neuter nouns). Uninflected forms existed also in all other nominal inflection classes, but here only with a subclass of nouns (e.g. nouns of the #-stem class with long syllable, such as ld ‘way’; see Campbell 1959: 235), and also adjectives had no inflectional endings for definite nominative/accusative singular contexts. Derivation with these lexemes was therefore word-based in OE (e.g. fultum ‘help’  fultum-ian ‘to help’  fultum-(i)-end ‘helper’). Remnants of the IE root-based system can be found, e.g. with the ablaut pattern of strong verbs, but these instances were fossilized remnants. With numerous instances of stem-alternation in derivation, OE exhibited fusional encoding strategies of lexical information. However, much of these morphophonemic and allomorphic types of variation were not productive any more in OE. The typological difference between OE and PDE becomes evident from a comparison of the complexity of word-families, i.e. lexemes linked by means of transparent morphological relations. The shift towards invariant base forms with native morphemes and the reduction of the use of affixes resulted in a reduction of the complexity of word-families in the sense that it the complexity and the growth of larger groups of derivationally related words decreased. Compare the different morphological relations between the lexemes based on one and the same lexical base in OE with those in PDE: OE:

PDE:

g-: gn ‘to go’ – in-/ut-/ofergang ‘entrance/exit/ crossing’ – genge ‘gait’ – gangern ‘privy’ brec-: brecan ‘to break’ – gebrecness ‘breach’ – bræc ‘breaking’ – broc ‘fragment’ – brec ‘state of being broken’ – brye ‘breaking’ go (+ -goer) – ongoing break – breaking (breach cannot be related to break from a synchronic perspective).

Conclusion 45

The examples illustrate that the loss of stem-variability with native lexemes in combination with a loss of affixes (particularly prefixes) led to severe restrictions in the formation of larger groups of morphologically and semantically related lexemes in English. Considering the examples from OE above, many relations were unproductive, above all derivation based on one of the ablaut grades of the verb. Nevertheless, these forms were preserved and served as input for new formations, e.g. in compounds. In other words, ablaut still permeated the lexicon and thus contributed to the high degree of cohesion among lexical elements. Word-fields that derive from various modifications of one and the same lexical (verbal) base are much smaller in PDE and, if they exhibit a certain richness, usually based on nonnative elements. It should, however, be mentioned that in some cases derivational relations which had been removed in ME were replaced by new derivations over time, comp. OE wyrcan ‘to work’, weorc/wyrht ‘work’, wyrcend/wyrhta ‘worker’ and PDE work (V) – work (N) – worker (Görlach 1994: 110). 7. Conclusion This chapter presented a discussion of central concepts used in morphological typology, focusing on their application to the description of morphological structures found in the lexicon. The basic typological shift in English noun formation with respect to the formal structure of words can now be sketched as follows. Old English exhibited remnants of a fusional language type since stem-alternation and alternation of suffix forms (e.g. -d/-t/-) occurred in abundance. Both types of alternation were, however, unproductive since the processes that triggered the alternations, such as iumlaut, ablaut, or consonant lengthening (see Kastovsky 1992b: 423, 2006a: 171, 2006b: 75), had already become unproductive when Old English came into existence. Thus, English was undergoing a transition from a base-variant to a base-invariant language in its earliest stage. The loss of inflections then induced a general change from stem-based to word-based morphology, by which all kinds of formal alternation of bases and affixes were lost. It stands to reason whether this loss was accompanied by a heavy reduction in the number of derivational suffixes or a decline in use, or whether the frequency of use of bound morphemes in the lexicon was unaffected by these developments.

Chapter 3 The framework: Suffixation and conceptual categories

1. Introduction The main goals of the present chapter are the development of a theoretical approach that is most suitable for the documentation of the historical development of OE noun suffixes and, secondly, situating the present study among the different approaches to word-formation and the morphological analysis of suffixed words. Based on the principles of onomasiological word-formation (tekauer 1998, 2005) and thus on the assumption that the main function of language is to denote entities in the extra-linguistic environment, a categorical framework based on conceptual categories will be elaborated. The categories are part of event schemas, which are cognitive knowledge structures evolving from the interaction of human beings with their environment and which structure perception. It is argued here that suffixes function as indicators of these categories. 2. Grammatical vs. semantic analysis of derivatives The approach taken here is compositional, i.e. the basic assumption is that derivatives consist of morphemes, which are minimal meaningful units in a language, and that morphemes may be combined to create new, complex expressions. This does, however, not mean that all word-formation products preserve their compositional character over time. It is one of the basic characteristics of word-formation that derivatives often loose the compositional character from a semantic perspective, i.e. instances of idiosyncrasy and processes of lexicalization are pervasive in this domain. The existence of these phenomena is, however, not problematic for the present study since the analysis of OE and early ME noun suffixes includes only transparent derivatives, i.e. word-forms that result from a possibly productive rule and for which a plausible semantic relation between the base and the derivative can be established from a synchronic OE point of view (see Chapter 4).

Grammatical vs. semantic analysis of derivatives 47

Lexicalized forms do not represent the rule-governed application of a particular word-formation rule and were therefore excluded. In compositional approaches, the process of derivation and its result, a derivative, may be described from two perspectives, either with reference to the underlying grammatical structure, as derivatives arguably derive from underlying syntagmas, or with reference to their semantic structure, since a derivative is a semantic unit composed of two morphemes with individual meanings. In the first case, it is assumed that a morphological composite is based on an underlying sentence, which means that complex morphological units can be analyzed on the basis of the relation between different syntactic constituents (Marchand 1965: 301). The grammatical analysis of word-formation products based on syntactic roles was initiated by Bally (1944) and fully developed by Marchand (1965, 1969). The syntactic approach is well established in word-formation analyses, but will be rejected here as it presents a number of shortcomings. Firstly, it is difficult to classify denominal and deadjectival suffixed nouns with this approach, since the syntactic relation between two nominals is not made explicit by means of a predicate and since a deadjectival formation has no overtly expressed referent (e.g. goodness, freedom). In such cases a verb that is not present in the surface structure has to be reconstructed in order to assign a syntactic role to abstract noun suffixes like -ship, -hood or -ness. This procedure raises the question of whether it is legitimate to base the analysis on an assumed element that has no overt expression (see the discussion of such formations in Marchand 1965, 1969: ch. 1). Secondly, a number of suffixed nouns cannot be unanimously classified as representing one or another structural type. Derivatives with -er, for instance, may represent the Subject type (e.g. writer), the Instrument type (e.g. mixer, toaster) or the Locative type (sleeper, diner). It is, above all, the polysemous character of many suffixes and the respective derivatives which makes a more semantically-based or onomasiological approach more favorable than a purely grammatical one, as the latter would require a number of semantic subclassifications of suffixes within a grammatical description. Thirdly, strictly grammatical analyses do not account for semantic differences between suffixes that represent the same grammatical type. Thus, for example, -ian and -ist in denominal nouns denoting persons are treated alike since both of them are used to create nouns of the S-O type (e.g. Marxist: X adheres to Marx, comedian: X makes comedy) in spite of the semantic difference of the derivatives (-ist tends to be used only for persons adhering to a particular ideology or social movement). Likewise, the se-

48 Suffixation and conceptual categories mantically similar suffixes -dom and -ship are treated as one and the same type of suffix, despite the differences in meaning of the derivatives. In order to account for these differences, a semantic description would have to be provided for each single suffix, which makes the description of the various noun suffixes unsystematic. Finally, a purely grammatical approach does not pay tribute to the fact that the formation of new words is guided by the speakers’ need or desire to create verbal expressions for the denomination of particular entities in their environment, i.e. the combination of bases and affixes is guided by the association of entities in the extra-linguistic world with more general classes of objects or concepts. As tekauer (2005: 212) points out, the naming act is not a purely linguistic act: “naming units do not come into existence in isolation from factors, such as human knowledge, human cognitive abilities, experiences, discoveries of new things, processes, and qualities, human imagination, etc.” Thus, a naming act is preceded by cognitive activities, basically by the perception of the extralinguistic environment and the selection of entities that deserve a name, which should be considered in any comprehensive theory of wordformation. 3. Semantic description of suffixes Descriptions of word-formation and of suffixes based on semantic criteria are much less frequent than those based on syntactic criteria or thematic roles. As Dalton-Puffer (1997: 9) states, an inspection of the literature on English word-formation might lead to the conclusion “that meaningoriented approaches to word-formation are practically untilled soil”. This observation certainly refers to the literature found in Western linguistics and, more particularly, to English word-formation, because it contrasts with the large number of semantic approaches taken in Slavic linguistics (e.g. Dokulil 1962, 1968; tekauer 1998, 2005) and in more recent publications on German word-formation (Meibauer 1995; Draeger 1996; Scherer 2005). In the present study, suffixes are regarded as linguistic signs that indicate abstract, categorical meanings, which leads to the question of the nature and the origin of these categories. Some suggestions have already been made in this respect. Szymanek (1988), for instance, defined and classified the categories and functions of derivational morphemes based on the principles of cognitive categorization: “The basic set of lexical derivational categories is rooted in the fundamental concepts of cognition.” This basic

Semantic description of suffixes 49

set comprises 25 fundamental concepts of cognition, among them OBJECT (THING), SUBSTANCE, PERSON, NUMBER, AGENT and INSTRUMENT.20 According to Szymanek (1988: 119) these “lexico-semantic classes“ represent “generalized meanings which are directly accountable for in terms of any one or more of the fundamental concepts of cognition.“ The question is, however, whether and how these cognitive categories can be mapped directly onto derivational categories. Thus, PERSON and AGENT may be derived by the same derivational process in PDE, that is, suffixation with -er, which is also used to derive nouns of the categories INSTRUMENT (mixer) and, in the broadest sense, SPACE (diner, sleeper, shitter). All these categories may be fundamental concepts of cognition, but Szymanek leaves open why a language may assign only one derivational process to different categories. Furthermore, it remains unclear which factors motivate the 25 fundamental concepts of cognition and why some categories are not subsumed under a more general one, e.g. PERSON and AGENT under a category “human agent”, or TIME, EVENT and PROCESS under “temporal contour”. A more recent approach to the categorical meaning of affixes was offered by Lieber (2004), who developed a descriptive system for the discussion of lexeme-forming word-formation (i.e. affixation) based on feature items (“descriptive primitives” or “atoms”). Lieber proposes a featural system that can be applied cross-categorically and which may thus be used for the semantic description of nominal, adjectival and verbal affixes. The featural system is composed of four binary features, which refer to both the meaning of derivatives as a whole and to meaning components of single affixes, and which may either have a positive or a negative value: [±material], [±dynamic], [±IEPS], [±locative]. The feature [±material] defines the conceptual category of substances, essences and things. A positive value means that the nouns denote a physical object, or an unbounded mass (like substance) (e.g. tranquiliz-er, sweeten-er), a negative value indicates that the noun denotes an abstraction. For verbs and adjectives the feature [material] is irrelevant, as they lack any kind of materiality. The presence of the feature [±dynamic] signals an eventive or situational meaning. Thus, a positive value corresponds to an event, a negative value to a state. The feature [IEPS] (‘Inferable Eventual Position or State’) signals the existence of a sequence of places or states. If the feature is positively marked, “there will be a sequence of places/states such that at any point between the initial and final place/state, some progression will have taken place towards the final place/state.” (Lieber 2004: 29) With dynamic verbs, a positive value for [IEPS] denotes movement or change along a directed path from a sub-

50 Suffixation and conceptual categories class of verbs that denote movement or change of state with a random path (e.g. walk, fall, fluctuate, but also evaporate, grow). Finally, the presence of the feature [±locative] signals position or place in time or space as a relevant meaning component with a given lexical item. A negative value indicates privation or non-existence, such as with verbs like miss or lack or adjectival affixes like -less, which denote absence and thus the nonexistence of space or a room that an entity might occupy: “to be absent is not to be somewhere.” (Lieber 2004: 101) In her analysis of -er-formations in PDE Ryder (1999) suggests that derivatives are part of a cognitive event schema and that this schema is the base on which individuals interpret unknown derivatives (as well as compounds). A schema is defined by the author as a “cognitive knowledge structure made up of components with specified relationships to each other” (Ryder 1999: 277), and both the base word and the derivative take part in the same schema. Thus, an agent like printer is part of an event schema PRINTING, which also involves an instrument, i.e. a printing press. In her analysis of the PDE suffix -er, Ryder suggests categories like AGENT, INSTRUMENT, PATIENT, LOCATIVE , or CAUSATIVE in order to cover the wide range of potential and actual meanings of nouns with this suffix. This procedure is interesting for the present study since PDE -er represents a number of properties that are characteristic also for many OE suffixes, above all polysemy and thus membership to several conceptual categories. Another advantage of this approach is that it can be applied to different types of derivatives, i.e. it accounts for deverbal, deadjectival and denominal derivatives. Especially the latter are difficult to describe in approaches that focus on the verb as the main source of derivations and in which derivatives are related to thematic roles assigned by the underlying verb.

4. The approach taken in the present study 4.1. Word-formation rules from a cognitive perspective Any study dealing with word-formation has to face the problem that, on the one hand, the formation of words is rule-governed in the sense that many derivatives follow the same formal and semantic pattern, but that, on the other hand, many word-forms are idiosyncratic and thus seem to escape a particular rule. Furthermore, word-formation exhibits a number of gaps and lexical inconsistencies. The approach taken to word-formation in the pre-

The approach taken in the present study 51

sent study is based on some basic principles of Langacker’s (1987, 2008) Usage based grammar, as it deals best with the dichotomy of rule-governed word-formation vs. irregularities (idiosyncrasies) found in this domain. According to this cognitive approach to grammar, rules derive from “particular statements” (in our case: word-forms) that serve as the matrix from which speakers abstract more general patterns. In this sense, a rule is a schematic representation of the existence of patterns and thus of single units that result from it, i.e. it is a construct that crystallizes from individual cases. As Langacker (2008: 23) states, rules are “abstract templates obtained by reinforcing the commonality inherent in a set of instances.” Consequently, rules describing complex expressions are schematic in character, embodying features that are common to all individual cases. The schemas “are abstracted from occurring expressions, and once established as units they can serve as templates guiding the formation of new expressions on the same pattern.” (2008: 24) Langacker distinguishes between general statements, i.e. units that are fully explainable from a particular rule, and particular statements, i.e. word-forms that exhibit a high degree of idiosyncrasy. Both form the end points of a continuum. In this sense, it is not expected that rules embrace all linguistic units. Rather, single derivatives may represent “intermediate degrees of generality.” (Langacker 1987: 48) Usage-based grammar may be conceived of as an alternative solution between two extreme positions in word-formation, namely the assumption of fully rule-governed processes by which new derivatives come into existence, on the one hand, and the negation of rules, on the other hand, which is advocated by linguists who regard idiosyncrasy as the main argument against a rule-based approach (e.g. Aronoff 2007). An analysis based on the complete negation of word-formation rules could neither explain existing patterns in a language, both formal and semantic ones, nor predict how new forms can be created by means of applying these rules. The predictability of the meaning of derivatives may be higher or lower in single cases, and it is disturbed by the phenomenon that derivatives may change their meaning when the contexts in which they are used change. Assuming that the meaning of an expression is related to a particular context, the speaker’s apprehension of the circumstances may alter the meaning of an expression. In Langacker’s (2008: 29) words, “countless aspects of our surroundings do carry meaning potential”, above all the “fact of facing a particular interlocutor in a particular social situation.” Thus, it would be more appropriate to refer to the meaning of derivatives as the “meaning potential” they are equipped with, which may be derived from the linguistic form alone, but

52 Suffixation and conceptual categories which also resides in the conceptualizing activity of individual speakers. Only this line of reasoning may account for the fact that many derivatives are ambiguous in the sense that they allow for more than one categorical reading, i.e. one and the same morphological process may produce a form with two or more readings (e.g. printer, where only the context decides whether the concept of ‘person’ or ‘instrument’/‘object’ is expressed). Thus, some characteristic bits of meaning are not included in or predictable from the component structure, but derive from the use of words in a particular social situation, which weakens the assumption of a clear-cut, rulegoverned creation of derivatives and the predictability of meaning in wordformation. Since meanings are conventional, they reside at the social level, but there are different realizations of the meaning potential as there are different groups of speakers which use particular expressions in specific ways (e.g. metaphorical, technical, or having only a vague idea of what it refers to). The derivative bakery has, in this sense, different meanings for different groups of people: for the baker it is the working place and, sometimes, also the place where s/he sells his/her products, i.e. the emphasis is on the meaning component ‘place of production’, whereas for the customers the emphasis is more on the component ‘place of selling’ the product, as they are not involved in the process of production. In this sense, it is the apprehension of the circumstances that determines the exact content of the meaning potential of an expression. One should therefore not relegate the existence of idiosyncrasies and semantic changes to a general lack or theoretical unimportance of rules, but rather to the creativity of speakers in a continually changing social environment, as Langacker (1987: 65) suggests. For him, creating a novel expression involves linguistic convention and general problem-solving strategies to tackle the problem of finding a linguistic expression that denotes a concept a speaker has in mind. This concept-solving activity includes, among many factors, memory and “the ability to compare two structures and judge their degree of similarity” (65). Thus, rules exist, but they are the result of cognitive activity, which involves more than mere thinking in terms of formulas and patterns.

4.2. Schemas Suffixes indicate categorical meaning, i.e. the semantic content of suffixes is abstract, although the degree of abstractness may vary. The categories

The approach taken in the present study 53

derive from the interaction of human beings with their environment: each process, event or action, i.e. a situation that occurs in the extra-linguistic environment of individuals, is composed of different basic components, namely persons involved in the situation, objects involved in or surrounding the situation, a location where the situation takes place and which hosts the event, the result of a situation, and abstract ideas related to it (emotions, cognitions, concepts, e.g. freedom, boredom, happiness). These components are the result of a mental segmentation of the extra-linguistic environment into smaller units, which facilitates processing, and form the schema of a particular situation. In this sense, a linguistic expression never refers to an isolated entity, but is always bound to other categories that constitute the frame of a particular situation. Agents like teacher, surfer or worker do not act in isolation, but in a particular location (school, ocean, factory), deal with particular objects (chalk, surfboard, hammer), reach different results or goals with their activities (education, entertainment, production) and experience different abstract ideas that accompany the activity (fulfillment, disgust). Likewise, each location must host a particular action, event or process, and it thus related with persons, objects, actions that fill extra-linguistic space. In brief, all categories are related as they form part of a specific situation, that is, they constitute the frame that defines a particular situation. The conceptual categories used for the description of suffixal derivatives in the present study are supposed to represent components that derive from the mental segmentation of particular situations which human beings have experienced throughout their lives. This line of reasoning reflects the basic principle of cognitive grammar: individuals engage in interactions with their environment whereby these interactions induce cognitive activity, which in turn is reflected in language use. Different components of this environment form a schema, which in turn results from the repeated interaction of individuals with the environment, either through primary (direct) or secondary experience (e.g. through books, narrations etc.).21 A schema is composed of different abstract conceptual categories, such as Person or Location, which individuals fill with specific content when they encounter a specific situation. A concrete item that represents one of these categories of a schema may evoke the presence of all other items. Schank (1975) and Schank and Abelson (1977) suggest that the schemas which individuals establish over time allow them to fill in much of the details that are not specified or verbalized in an utterance. The verbal expression of the place of the situation baking, for instance, which is bakery, also implies the pres-

54 Suffixation and conceptual categories ence of persons and objects involved, even though these often remain unexpressed. The idea of default values for particular slots that characterize a schema goes back to Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland and Hinton (1986).22 According to Anderson and Pearson (1988: 42) schemas are (1) abstract because they are generalizations from what human beings know about particular concepts in the extra-linguistic world, and they are (2) structured in the sense that they represent the relationship holding between its component parts, which are called “slots” or “variables” by Anderson and Pearson, but referred to as “categories” here. These slots are filled with particular information when individuals activate a schema in order to interpret a particular event. In the present study, the term schema is defined in the sense of Ryder (1999: 277) as a “cognitive structure made up of different components with specified relationships to each other.” In other words, a schema integrates particular kinds of relations that derive from human interaction with the environment and the consequent formation of particular knowledge structures consisting of single components related to particular situations, including locations, persons, objects, goals and results related to them. Schema theories are primarily used in cognitive psychology, above all to explain the structure of memory, perception and knowledge. Three of the major schema theories are (1) Minsky’s (1975) concept of frame, (2) Rumelhart’s (1975) theory on schemas for stories and (3) Schank’s (1975) and Schank and Abelson’s (1977) theory of scripts. All of them share certain characteristics (see also Gross 1992: 345–350), of which the following will be adopted here as well and applied to the analysis of derivational morphology: (a)

Schemas embody knowledge and experience of the world rather than abstract rules, i.e. they derive from concrete experience of individuals with their environment. (b) Schemas are active recognition devices in the sense that individuals try to make sense of ambiguous and unfamiliar information in terms of existing knowledge and understanding. (c) Schemas represent knowledge at all levels of abstraction, i.e. abstract concepts as well as concrete items participate in schemas. (d) Schemas may overlap, i.e. one or more concepts may participate in a variety of schemas.

(a) implies that schemas derive from commonly experienced events. Derivatives, which are claimed to be part of the schema evoked by their base words, are interpreted by referring to the respective schema within which

The approach taken in the present study 55

they represent a particular category. A schema includes e.g. an action and the respective agent, which means that a derivative denoting a person represents the category Person within the schema evoked by the base verb. Note that the amount of information activated by a particular stimulus and thus the size of a constructed knowledge structure varies tremendously among individuals (Thomson and Tulving 1970; Greenspan 1986). (b) refers to the observation that not all word-forms whose referent is unknown to a speaker necessarily block the formation of a schema. Rather, a hearer will construct a mental schema that could potentially fit to the expression in question and by which its ‘meaning’ can be reconstructed. Ad-hoc creations or new word-forms unknown to the interlocutor may, for instance, be interpreted with reference to already existing schemas in which the new (or a semantically ambiguous) coinage could potentially participate. (c) implies that not only concrete nouns evoke schemas, but also nouns denoting abstract concepts, such as freedom, friendship or redemption. All of these nouns may be related to e.g. persons which represent or are related to the abstract concept, or to places which the concept is bound to. The abstract noun drunkenness, for instance, necessarily refers to a person and an action, and thus participates in a particular schema, e.g. that of drinking or celebrating. Finally, (d) suggests that many derivatives may participate in more than one schema, depending on the range of meanings of the base word, i.e. the degree of semantic elasticity. A deverbal noun like enjoyment may evoke a large variety of schemas, due to the broad range of contexts in which something can be enjoyed. Other nouns, e.g. fishing, are restricted to particular schemas with pre-defined entries for the different categorical slots, such as Location (=any stretch of water) and Person (=fisher). As Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland and Hinton (1986) suggest, the generation and application of schemas is an active, dynamic process: schemas vary depending on the situation to which they are applied, and single variables of a schema may be subject to change within the course of life. The dynamic conception of schemas may be transferred to the lexicon of a language, which undergoes continuous renewal in order to enable speakers to encode particular elements of a schema. Evidence for the existence of mental networks comes from several psychological experiments, e.g. Thomson and Tulving (1970), Rumelhart (1975), or Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland and Hinton (1986), all of them suggesting that individuals activate sets of distinct categories when confronted with linguistic input. In these experiments, subjects were usually asked to retell a story they heard before, or to elaborate thoughts on a

56 Suffixation and conceptual categories given topic, while the researchers categorized the statements into larger groups of abstract, mental units. The experiments vary, of course, with respect to the type of tasks that the subjects were supposed to perform, and also concerning the system of categories evolving from them. However, they all suggest that individuals do not produce verbal statements in a random way, but tend to focus on specific categorical information they elaborate on.

4.3. Conceptual categories In the present study, five conceptual categories are assumed to compose the schema of a particular situation. The categories are always implied in communicative acts, because each verbal expression evokes the presentation of a particular mental schema. Usually, only single elements of a schema are selected and verbalized, namely those which constitute the topic of a communicative act and/or those which have to be made explicit or emphasized. Thus, talking about a mixer implies information on the category Location, a kitchen, because this is the prototypical place for the interaction of individuals with mixers. The location does, however, not have to be expressed unless it does not coincide with the prototypical place of use, i.e. with socially shared experience. The categories that remain unexpressed in an utterance are implied in the frame and could therefore be verbalized as well, i.e. they are available for verbal expression. It is, of course, impossible to postulate a fixed set of categories that can be claimed to underlie all human thinking. In the present study, a categorical system will be used that is based on the different onomasiological classes that tend to reoccur in all suffixation processes from Old English to PDE and which correspond to general conceptual categories. Person

Action (event)

Abstract (Result, Goal)

Object Location Figure 3. Abstract schema composed of five basic conceptual categories

The approach taken in the present study 57

Figure 3 illustrates in what way different conceptual categories are connected to form a cognitive network. The five categories are basic parameters for situations (events, processes, actions) occurring the extra-linguistic environment that may be indicated by means of suffixes in English. However, the categories may differ in weight with different situations, i.e. they are not equally important in all contexts. Location may be less important for event schemas in which it is only a background of some activity or if it can be inferred, as with taking a walk or cooking, but it may become foregrounded in other situations. The understanding of the concept ‘schema’ and the single categories that are supposed to form a schema as presented in this study do not fully coincide with traditional conceptions of what a schema is. For instance, for all authors cited and referred to so far schemas are not related to particular categories. Rather, they are composed of an unlimited number of less welldefined “units” which are interconnected and typically associated with a particular situation. These units may consist of any verbal expression that denotes a variable which is positively connected to other variables of a schema. Rumelhart, Smolensky, McClelland and Hinton (1986), for instance, regard “units” as elements that form a network which ultimately characterizes one particular concept, e.g. a room. Thus, if the network includes nouns like stove and oven, individuals also activate concepts like sink, refrigerator, toaster etc. along with the characteristic that the room is small and a kitchen. Bed and sofa would be units that evoke the schema of a large room, a bedroom. Ryder (1994: 67) uses the example of the general schema ‘birthday party’, which includes the units cake, candle, guests bringing gifts. In this sense, schemas are mosaics composed of different components or pieces that are related to one single event or entity in the extra-linguistic world. Some of the units that are connected in cognitive networks frequently co-occur, e.g. toaster and mixer with kitchen, in which case they develop stronger interconnections in the network than those which are not always present in a schema, e.g. ice cube. Those units that tend to co-occur repeatedly may come to function as representatives of an entire schema over time. In the present study the “units” or components of a schema are more abstract and conceived of as fixed categories that represent different aspects related to one situation or event and which may be expressed by means of derivational suffixes. In this sense, the term schema refers to a much more general cognitive knowledge structure here than it is usually suggested in the literature, based on the observation that all of them can be verbalized

58 Suffixation and conceptual categories and be the starting point for the formation of new words with one of the suffixes available in OE and Present-Day English.

4.4. The role of suffixes in a schema-based approach Suffixes are supposed to indicate particular conceptual categories. In this sense, a nominal derivative is composed of a lexical base which evokes a particular schema that is relevant for the interpretation of the word-form, and a bound morpheme indicating a particular conceptual category within the schema (this holds for both denominal and deverbal derivations). The base word and the derivative participate in the same schema. Categoryinternal specifications are, however, rarely expressed by means of the form of derivatives, at least in OE and PDE: the question of whether a noun of the category Person, for instance, denotes the agent, patient or beneficient of an action is often not determined by the mere attachment of a suffix, which accounts for the high degree of flexibility with respect to the semantic relation between a base and a suffix. The exact relation between a lexical base and a semantically ambiguous suffix is made on the basis of common knowledge of schemas and on the frequency of occurrence of particular types of objects, persons etc. within these schemas.23 The fact that the majority of OE and PDE suffixes indicate more than one and often even more than two categories supports the idea that suffixes function as indicators of particular categories rather than expressing categorical information themselves. The polysemy of suffixes, which results in semantic ambiguity of the derivatives, is a cross-linguistic phenomenon and can be found in various IE languages, as the standard grammars of the respective languages or comprehensive studies of the system of derivation of a particular language suggest (e.g. Portuguese: Cunha and Cintra 1985, ch. 6; German: Wellmann 1975; Gersbach and Graf 1984; Draeger 1996). The fact that suffixes indicate general conceptual categories rather than a specific lexical meaning may be explained from a cognitive perspective. As tekauer (2005: 214) suggests, the primary task of speakers to be mastered during the naming process is to analyze an object that has been selected from the extra-linguistic environment and that is to be named. The analysis involves a process of abstraction and generalization since “a name is not given to a single object but to a whole class of similar objects.” Prototypical features are assigned to objects and compared to features of similar objects, by which general categories of entities occurring in the extra-

The approach taken in the present study 59

linguistic environment are formed. The use of derivational processes by a speaker is thus the result of three processes: (1) the categorization of particular entities occurring in the environment according to prototypical properties, (2) the selection of particular markers or linguistic units that indicate these categories, and finally (3) the combination of the indicator of the category (here: a suffix) with a base word that specifies the type of the member of a category. Individual properties of the referent are not necessarily part of the verbal sign, i.e. the suffix, but added through knowledge of the social environment. Thus, a Person-noun suffix like PDE -er does not indicate whether the person performs an action habitually (gambler), professionally (teacher), or at a particular moment only (buyer), or all of it (singer). The structural type of encoding categories used in a language and the specifity of the categorical information indicated by affixes depends on language-specific conventions.

4.5. Advantages of the schema-based approach One of the advantages of the schema-based approach over classical ones is that it accounts for derivations in all directions, i.e. it may account for deverbal nouns as well as for denominal nouns or denominal verbs, because all concepts (persons, actions, locations, objects etc.) are related to each other. Thus, the derivation of a deverbal noun denoting a person may be accounted for by the schema in the same way as a denominal verb that is derived from a noun denoting a person or a location. Consider the following examples: (5)

Derivational directions in a schema-based approach a. Person  Action

e.g. ‘person who performs V’: teach-er, surf-er

b. Object

Action

e.g. ‘to put into N’: to en-cage, to bag

c. Person

Abstract

e.g. ‘quality of the relation between N’: friend-ship, brother-hood

In (5a), the action provides the base for the denotation of the person performing it. These are deverbal derivations of nouns that belong to the category Person. In (5b), a noun denoting an object serves as the base for the derivation of a verb, i.e. a lexical unit that denotes an action related to the

60 Suffixation and conceptual categories object. In this case, the derivational process starts from the category Object and the slot for Action is filled with a denominal verb. In (5c), a noun denoting a person may be the base for the formation of a noun denoting an abstract concept, such as one referring to the quality or type of relation between two individuals. Note that the meaning relation between base and derivative varies within each single derivational direction: the relation between Object and Action, for instance, is not always ‘to put into N’, but may also be ‘Object used for V-ing’ or ‘resulting from V’. Languages vary with respect to the derivational directions they encode morphologically, and a language may also vary diachronically in this respect. Thus, some relations are marked in one period, but become unmarked or even entirely unsystematic in another, or the other way around. Furthermore, suffixes may adopt or loose the function of indicating a particular categorial relation. For instance, in OE the relation Object  Person could be expressed by means of the noun suffix -ERE (e.g. b#c-ere ‘scribe’, fisc-ere ‘fisher’), and it still may be so in PDE (e.g. bird-er ‘a person who watches birds’, left-hand-er). However, while the relation Location  Person may be expressed morphologically in PDE by means of -er, as in Berlin-er, farm-er, London-er, in OE -ERE was not used in this function. Using this categorical approach, standard descriptions of derivational processes, such as -hood

]N _____ ]N

or

NN

can be dispensed with because they are without any explanatory value from a semantic perspective: they merely indicate that a suffix, in this case -hood, combines with elements of the category N to derive N. What cannot be recognized from such notations is the way in which the process of suffixation affects the meaning of the base word and thus the semantic function an affix fulfils. In other words, standard notations indicate only half of the functions of a particular derivational process. It follows that the notation must be complemented with semantic information, which may turn the analysis of affixes unsystematic and does not highlight the semantic proximity between some groups of suffixes. Next to formal features, such as word class, also semantic features are projected from a suffix onto the derivative, which may alter the original categorical meaning of a lexical base. A simplified example for this idea is be the following: N [Person] + [Abstract]  N [Abstract] friend -ship  friendship

The approach taken in the present study 61

The formula indicates that the derived word is an abstract noun and thus one denoting an entity without a physical body in the extra-linguistic world, whereas the lexical base is a noun denoting a person and thus an entity with a physical body in the extra-linguistic world. The derivative friendship refers to an abstract concept denoting the social relation between a pair or a group of individuals, but not a particular “exemplar”. The conceptual meaning of the base is, however, not entirely lost since the derivative still implies reference to members of the category Person. The advantage of this approach over other, strictly grammatical ones is that it does not place the predicate into the center of all derivational processes. Approaches that relate derivatives to thematic roles of the verb, for instance, are difficult to apply to denominal or deadjectival formations since these cannot be linked directly to argument structures of an underlying verb. In those approaches, denominal nouns are conceived of as implying a verbal element that is unexpressed (e.g. Laca 1987; tekauer 2005, who suggests that denominal formations like novelist include an “Actional seme” that remains unexpressed) or as mere syntactic transpositions from underlying adjectives or nouns.24 In the schema-based approach, denominal and deadjectival formations do not have to be treated differently from deverbal formations since all of them are related to one specific event schema. Derived nouns are regarded as participants in a cognitive event schema, and both nominal and verbal bases are components of a particular event schema, i.e. the schema for a particular situation may be retrieved from any of the categories that participate in it, and thus not only from the predicate. The nouns boat or sea, for instance, may evoke a schema for the situation sailing even though the predicate is unexpressed since a schema is an associative network including all five categories as central, indispensable units. None of the categories is more or less central than any of the others. Consider, for instance, the OE denominal Person-noun b#cere ‘writer, scribe, learned man’, which is derived from b#c ‘book’. Following Ryder (1999: 290), denominal formations encapsulate two roles in the respective event schema. In our case, one of them is the referent of the derivative as such which, in the case of b#cere, is an individual (category Person), the other role is the referent of the base word, b#c, which is the object or result of the action performed by the individual. From these two categorical elements, individuals may construct a mental schema even though a predicate is absent. Actions related to books are limited and imply typical processes like reading, writing, binding, lending or selling it, so that the exact relation between b#c and b#cere can be determined on the basis of cultural knowl-

62 Suffixation and conceptual categories edge shared by a speech community: it could denote a class of persons who either read, write, bind, lend or sell books. In OE, the noun denoted a person that regularly reads books, thus meaning ‘learned man’, as well as a person that writes books, i.e. a ‘scribe’ or ‘writer’. The fact that a denominal noun is not the result of a direct derivation from the action itself may explain the difficulties in interpreting denominal formations. The meaning of denominal nouns may not be directly related to the action performed by the referent, as it is the case with formations of the type ehtere ‘persecutor’ (from OE eht-an ‘to persecute’), but must be reconstructed from the role of the base noun in the event schema. The fact that it is only one of the possible interpretations of b#cere that became established in the community of speakers, namely that of ‘one who writes books, learned man’, is related to the conceptualization of the extra-linguistic environment in which individuals act. The environment provides clues for the construction of prototypical schemas, which makes the formation of particular associations more likely than that of others. The construction of event schemas is similar with deadjectival nouns, e.g. scyldigness ‘guilt’ from scyldig ‘guilty’ or PDE unfriendliness, which are, on the one hand, related to a predicate in that they represent the evaluation of the result of an action, and, on the other hand, to a person who performed the action. Thus, the abstract noun is part of an event schema that is linked to other conceptual categories, namely Action and Person: such nouns refer to particular actions whose outcome is negative, and to persons who act as agents of the actions to which the attributes scyldig or unfriendly refer. The derivational relation is therefore Abstract  Action  Person. What is problematic with deadjectival formations is the broad range of possible actions that led to the state or quality denoted by the base adjective. This specific information can only be inferred from the context, but not from the functional role of the adjective itself. Thus, the question of what action it actually is that characterizes a person as scyldig ‘guilty’, or rihtwis ‘righteous’ or which characterizes a state (e.g. frod#m ‘freedom’) allows for a wide range of associations, and the interpretation of such derivatives depends almost exclusively on contextual information. Finally, the abstract event schema also lends itself for a description of semantic overlaps with particular suffixes, which tends to involve a particular set of categories only and to follow a specific path. Two patterns have been frequently observed. One the one hand, there is a strong tendency for Person-noun suffixes to extend their meaning to the category of Object first and often, at a later stage, also to that of Location. The extension from Per-

The five conceptual categories 63

son (or Agent) to Object has been discussed by various authors (e.g. Dressler 1986; Munske 2002; Scherer 2005). Croft (1991: 169) explains the direction of this semantic extension in terms of thematic roles: the similarity between Agent and Instrument derives from a causal chain according to which instruments are the first elements to fill the agent role when this role is not in the focus. On the other hand, there is a pattern that involves the categories Action and Abstract, since both are often represented by one and the same marker in different languages (e.g. OE -NESS and -UNG). Thus, mergers between e.g. Person and Abstract should be less likely to be found, which corresponds to the data of this study. However, it is theoretically possible that a suffix derives nouns of all conceptual categories since all of them are related to each other and have equal status. Person

Action (event)

Abstract (Result, Goal)

Object Location Figure 4. Two types of categorical overlap

The separation into two basic groups is also justified on cognitive grounds. The difference between both classes of categories is determined by the feature ‘materiality’ in the sense that persons, objects and locations have a physical shape, color and conture in the extra-linguistic world and may thus be subject to sensual perception, whereas abstract concepts and processes have no physical body. Further evidence comes from neurolinguistic investigations: the fact that words denoting material entities and those denoting immaterial ones are processed differently has been shown in various studies (Ellis and Young 1991; Hinton, Plaut and Shallice 1993; Weiß 1997; Pulvermüller 2002: ch. 4). 5. The five conceptual categories The five conceptual categories distinguished in the present study are not entirely unrelated to the classification of nouns proposed in the traditional studies on word-formation: the category Person includes Agent nouns

64 Suffixation and conceptual categories (though not exclusively, see below), Object has some affinity with nouns that, from a syntactic perspective, derive from adverbs of instrument, Location includes nouns that syntactically are based on adverbs of location, Action is close to the well-established category of Nomina Actionis, and Abstract to the category of Nomina Abstracta. The classical categories are, however, purely linguistically determined and often too narrow. The group of Agent nouns, for instance, does not include other types of individuals that fulfil different thematic roles, such as patient, possessor, beneficient or receiver. All of them, however, denote human beings and are therefore subsumed under one category here (Person). The five categories also resemble the five nominalization types distinguished by Ehrich (1991: 450): agent-nominalization, instrument-nominalization, place-nominalization, action-nominalization and abstract nominalization. These different types correspond to the nature of the referent denoted by a given derivative. However, this approach applies to deverbal formations only and is therefore inadequate for a description of other derivational directions. Moreover, since it is argued here that the perception of the extra-linguistic environment determines the way speakers use and form new words, derivatives must be classified on the basis of the interaction of speakers with their environment, for which a schema-based approach seems to be most adequate.

5.1. Person Each schema includes a category which refers to a human being that is related to an event/action/process, either as the agent of the action, a beneficiary, a possessor, an experiencer or a patient, i.e. it may fulfil any thematic role. Derivatives denoting human beings are classified as members of the category Person. Persons are related to (1) objects, since they either use them or are subjected to the working of an object, (2) locations, since all human beings occupy a particular room, (3) actions, since people either perform actions or are affected by them, and (5) purposes, goals and results of actions, which are relevant to individuals. The conceptual category Person will be defined as follows: Person The category Person comprises all lexical units that denote a human being. The denotation may be based on physical properties, particular activities performed by the individual (habitually, professionally or at the moment of utterance), profession, or social status.

The five conceptual categories 65

In other words, the category comprises different types of individuals, which may be defined by their profession (dema ‘judge’), habitual activities (spellere ‘proclaimer’), the performance of an action at a particular point of time (andettere ‘confessor’) or by certain social characteristics (gewinna ‘enemy’). However, such specifications are rather arbitrary and will therefore be neglected here. 5.2. Object In a broad sense, nouns of the category Object denote a configuration in space and thus any non-human material entity that occupies a particular room in three-dimensional space and which is thus accessible to the sensory organs of animate beings. The category includes material entities with a physical shape (e.g. gegirel ‘dress’), but also substances (e.g. læced#m 'medicine') since these are characterized by the presence of materia as well. Object Lexical items which are classified as members of the conceptual category Object are those which refer to non-human entities, including inanimate objects as well as animals and plants. The entities denoted are characterized by materiality, i.e. they have a material correlate in the extra-linguistic world. Thus, they occupy a certain amount of space and may be perceived by the sensory organs.

The referents of the nouns of this category have a physical body and therefore possess properties like size, color, weight or shape. Galmiche and Kleiber (1996) discuss whether the generic use of concrete nouns (which denote a material entity) converts them into abstract ones (e.g. Bread is expensive these days.) since the referent is not a specific physical entity in the strictest sense, but rather an abstraction of it. The authors suggest that concrete nouns which are used generically are, although they refer to a class of entities and not to a material entity in particular, nevertheless concrete since it is only the use of these nouns which is abstract, but not the referent. This view will be adopted here. Somewhat problematic are formations that can be interpreted as either denoting an abstract or a concrete entity (and thus a physical object), e.g. OE riched#m ‘treasure’ or hligd#m ‘holy things’. Such formations represent the ambiguous cases mentioned by Ehrich and Rapp (2000: 252): in some instances nominalized word-forms allow for both an interpretation as

66 Suffixation and conceptual categories state-nominalizations, which are based on state verbs, telic verbs or adjectives, or as result- or object-nominalizations. In the latter case, the nouns denote objects resulting from a particular event, process or activity. Nouns like hligd#m and riched#m refer to a group of material entities which, taken together, form an aggregate of objects that are subsumed under one label. Since the present study is based on the referential function of language, it is the property of the referent that is of interest here. Therefore, if the criteria of materiality and accessibility to sensory perception were fulfilled, a noun was classified as a member of the category Object. The category Object includes what in syntactic approaches to the description of derivatives would be labelled ‘instrument nouns’, i.e. nouns in adverbial function expressing the instrument needed to perform an action. However, the category also includes nouns denoting the result of particular event/action/process, such as ge-writa-ø ‘sth. that is written’ (writan) and objects involved in an action, such as gaf-ol ‘sth. which is given’ (gifan).

5.3. Location A schema includes a place where persons and objects are located and where particular actions are performed or events take place. The conceptual makeup of a lexical item belonging to the category Location is defined as follows: Location Lexical items that belong to the conceptual category of Location are those which denote a place in space related to a particular activity and/or an enclosed place surrounding individuals in particular situations.

In this sense, locations are places where people may be located in threedimensional space and where they perform actions. The category Location has a close affinity to adverbs of location in grammatical (syntactic) approaches to derivation, i.e. they belong to the Adverbial complement type in Marchand’s analysis (1969: 52–53), e.g. brewery (‘We brew (beer) in an X-ery’). However, in the present study those places are excluded from the category Location which are unrelated to human actions, but which in syntactic approaches would count as ‘locative’, due to their syntactic function as adverbials of place, e.g. boiler ‘place where water is boiled’. They are excluded since the category is supposed to be related to actions and events performed by individuals only and to places that surround human beings.

The five conceptual categories 67

The category includes nouns that denote extended locations, such as larger territories, countries and landscapes (e.g. OE ymbhwyrf-t ‘surrounding space, orbit’, cyne-d#m ‘kingdom’, wst-en ‘desert’) or more specific locations, such as buildings (e.g. fæst-en ‘fortress, enclosed place’), rooms (e.g. slæp-ærn ‘dormitory’) or any place that is functionalized for a particular action (e.g. OE hyd-els ‘hiding-place, cavern’, hleow-ø ‘shelter’). Somewhat problematic for a distinction of objects from location is the fact that prepositions may convert objects into locations, i.e. objects may provide a reference point for movement in space (e.g. Ablative, Allative) or for position (expressed by prepositions such as in, on, at, next to), as with under the table. In order to separate “genuine” locations from those which are actually objects, but serve as deictic orientation points for navigation in three-dimensional space, only those derivatives were classified as members of the category Location whose semantics either includes the denotation of a place that surrounds human beings (and living creatures in general), i.e. a place which constitutes a three-dimensional frame within which individuals may live or act (rooms, buildings, a hide-out etc.), or places which are bound to a concrete action (ræste ‘resting place’ which is defined by the action ræstan ‘to rest’, st!g ‘way’ used for st!gan ‘to ascent’). Both of them cannot refer to objects, i.e. the locative reading is not derived from objects.

5.4. Action A fourth category can be derived from the fact that individuals are related to other persons, objects, or locations since they interact with their environment. The relation between individuals, objects and locations and the influence which one of these entities exerts over another one is characterized by a particular type of action. Action The conceptual category Action comprises all lexical items with an eventive or a situational meaning. The items denote a concept that implies a temporal contour, thus having a more or less definable starting point and a more or less definable end point.

Nouns of this category either denote processes (e.g. ehtnysse ‘persecution’), which tend to be derived from atelic verbs, or events (e.g. hergung ‘devastation’), which refer to an occurrence at a fixed point in time and which tend to be based on telic verbs. In both cases the meaning of the derivatives

68 Suffixation and conceptual categories is characterized by a temporal structure, i.e. they denote an ongoing process that implies a change of state. In grammatical terms, nouns and other linguistic units of the category Action represent (or are derived from) the predicate of an utterance and are labelled ‘Nomina Actionis’ or ‘Predicate Nouns’ in traditional approaches. The category Action does, however, not only include deverbal nouns, but also denominal ones that denote an action or an event (bryd-lac ‘the celebration of a marriage’, fisc-o ‘fishing’) and is therefore broader than the traditional, grammatically-based category. Nouns based on state verbs (e.g. oht ‘thought’ from yncan ‘to think’) are not classified as members of the category Action, but as abstract nouns since these do not refer to processes or events with a clear starting and end point, but to a result, thus representing a static concept. 5.5. Abstract This category comprises nouns that denote an idea or a concept and thus entities which do not have a material substance and which cannot be perceived sensually (see also Galmiche and Kleiber [1996]). The referents of such words are mental constructs without a physical correlate in the extralinguistic world and thus not accessible to sensual perception. A second property, next to the lack of a physical correlate, is the absence of a dynamic conception. Abstract words are defined here as referring to ideas or concepts that are static in nature, the state holding for a more or less restricted period of time. Abstract Lexical items of the category Abstract denote entities in the extra-linguistic environment which are characterized by the absence of a physical body and therefore lack perceptibility. The entities are usually mental constructs, which become materialized either through particular actions which they are related to, or through objects or persons for which a particular abstract quality is characteristic.

Concepts like desperation or drunkenness, for instance, are not directly accessible for the human perceptual system. However, since they result from particular actions and thus are closely linked to individuals they usually become materialized through particular ways of behaviour. Next to mental or physical states, abstract nouns may also denote qualities, like OE fægernesse ‘beauty’ or hw!tnesse ‘whiteness’. Such nouns are mostly dead-

The five conceptual categories 69

jectival formations. In these cases, the lexical item is not directly related to an action or a process (as with drunkenness) by denoting a state resulting out of it, but a concept deriving from a quality or property of a referent that remains unexpressed. Thus, the interpretation of the meaning of abstract nouns requires the presence of a host object or person, i.e. one that offers a materialization of the concept denoted. Generally, Abstract-nouns denote (1) the non-material result of an action (e.g. bryche ‘breaking’ (e.g. of a promise), ræd ‘counsel’, geeaht/ onk ‘thought’) (2) the temporally extended consequence of a particular type of action/behaviour (geweald ‘power’, yfel ‘evil’, streng ‘strength’), (3) an emotional state resulting from or related to a particular event, person or object (angsumnesse ‘anxiety’, lufu ‘love’), or (4) an extended period in time (iugu ‘youth’, c!ldhd ‘childhood’, dagung ‘dawn’). Furthermore, nouns of the category Abstract may refer to a group of individuals who share certain properties such as rank, office, occupation, or behavioural practices in general (cristend#m, preosthd ‘priesthood’). Considering that categories in general are organized around prototypical members (see Rosch 1973, 1978), the derivatives that belong to one of the five conceptual categories discussed above may differ with respect to their degree of prototypicality. Thus, a derivational rule may produce wordforms that represent prototypes and forms that are less prototypical, but which may nevertheless be associated with a particular category. The categorical approach allows for a systematic classification of suffixes based on the type of referent which the derivatives denote (a person, an object, a place etc.). The inventory of suffixes for each category may then be subjected to an empirical analysis in order to detect changes in frequency of occurrence and the number of suffixes in general. A categorization into more fine-grained subcategories is, of course, possible. Thus, nouns of the category Person could be subdivided into categories like ‘person that performs an action habitually’ or ‘as a profession’, ‘sporadically’ etc. Likewise, the category Location is composed of different types of locations that a lexical unit may denote (see above). Such subspecifications are certainly important for the detection of particular semantic ‘subconcepts’ which single suffixes represent and which may determine their frequency of occurrence. For the analysis of the respective derivatives as such, however, a more fine-grained distinction is inappropriate as it would result in a fragmentary documentation of the use of OE and early ME noun suffixes from which general trends were difficult to recognize.

70 Suffixation and conceptual categories 6. Major shortcomings of the schema-based approach Although cognitive psychologists have frequently observed the effects of schemas in the performance of cognitive tasks, it should be noted that researchers cannot observe knowledge directly, but only infer the presence of such schemas from retrieval and constructive processes with individual subjects. Furthermore, the schema presented here is certainly a very simplified one and it can be supposed that the cognitive representation of a particular situation (event/process/action) is much more complex than the model suggests. However, since more complex schema representations are unnecessary for the research goal of the present study, the proposed one will not be extended to incorporate a more fine-grained distinction. Finally, it should be noted that the concept of schema implies that individuals store what they already know and may retrieve only known information, which implies a rather inflexible conception of memory and the mapping of linguistic items to concepts within schemas. In this sense, the schema approach does not sufficiently account for human perception: various experiments have shown that individuals are much better in remembering deviations from schemas and scripts than events which were consistent with them (Bower, Black and Turner 1979). Moreover, although human beings know about stereotypical situations they can also deal with unexpected ones for which no cognitive schema has been formed. This suggests that the schema approach should be less rigid. However, the development and the discussion of a more flexible model would unnecessarily complicate the present study, which intends to document the general frequency of use of suffixes over different historical periods and in different functions. 7. Summary The description of suffixes is based on the idea that suffixes indicate conceptual categories which form cognitive event schemas evoked by the base word. Suffixes are therefore analyzed from a functional point of view, their function being the indication of conceptual categories, but not the denotation of concepts. The conceptual category which a particular suffix indicates therefore determines its insertion context into an appropriate linguistic environment. The schema-based approach allows for a systematic description of the context of use of particular suffixes and for an empirical analysis of the use of suffixes in specific domains.

Chapter 4 The corpus & methodology

1. Introduction The present study is based on a corpus of 23 different texts that date from the earliest period of English, ca. 700–950, to early Middle English (–1250).25 The texts were categorized into four periods, according to the date of origin of the handwriting. The periods suggested below are not meant to represent clear-cut divisions of the history of English into different diachronic language norms, i.e. the continuity of language transmission is not put into question. They overlap, but do not entirely coincide with conventional subdivisions of the OE and ME periods into smaller units. The classical periodization is: Old West-Saxon (700–900), Late West Saxon (900–1100), and Early Middle English (1100–1300) (cf. Görlach 1994: 22–23). In the present study, OE1 corresponds to archaic OE, OE2 represents the heyday of the OE period, OE3 roughly coincides with late OE, and ME1 corresponds to early ME. Of course, all periods have transitional stages at their beginnings and ends. Periodization of the corpus texts OE1 OE2 OE3 ME1

–950 950–1050 1050–1150 1150–1250

The OE period was divided into three subperiods in order to detect possible changes in the frequency of occurrence of noun suffixes already within the OE period. This way, one can avoid the impression that a possible loss of suffixes in ME1 was the result of a sudden removal of all morphological exponents “almost over night”, as Hiltunen (1983: 92) states in his study on the development of OE prefixation. The subdivision into several smaller periods allows for the detection of a gradual decrease or increase in the use of bound morphemes to express lexical information on the lexical base itself. The periods overlap for one year in order to get round dates, which is

72 The corpus & methodology unproblematic since none of the texts can be dated back to a point in time that lies within this transition zone. The 23 texts of the corpus cover the development of English from the beginnings of its documentation until the end of the early ME period. In those cases where the date of origin of the handwriting of a copy does not coincide with the date of origin of the original text, the estimated date of production of the copy was taken as the basis for the categorization of the text into one of the four periods. The reason for this procedure is that it cannot be excluded that the last scribe changed the original language of the text that was copied in order to adapt it to current standards and/or to particular purposes. Copists or scribes may have modified the original text while reproducing it, which surfaces above all in the introduction of more contemporary linguistic features that replaced older, archaic ones found in the original. The distinction between Old English and Middle English, which is particularly important for the present study, and that between Middle English and Modern English is usually based on morphological criteria. Middle English began when (1) the merger of unstressed vowels resulted in the leveling of inflections, (2) the dative/accusative opposition with pronouns was lost, (3) grammatical gender, dual forms and strong adjectival inflection were lost, (4) the invariable article emerged, and when (5) inflection for case in the NP was progressively lost and replaced by a rigid wordorder and prepositional constructions (cf. Mossé 1952; Clark [1957] 1970). In spite of these important structural changes, one may assume an unbroken continuation of English from the OE to the ME period since the change from one morphological system to another cannot have occurred as abruptly as the written documentation suggests.26 There was a political and ethnical divide of the speech community during the Middle English period, but no linguistic divide as far as the spoken language of the majority of the Anglo-Saxon population was concerned (Tristram 2004: 106). Thus, in spite of the political and social changes that characterized Anglo-Saxon England after the Norman Conquest in 1066 English continued to be spoken by the common people and to be passed over to the next generation of speakers. Furthermore, most of the morphological changes that began to surface in ME had started already in OE, particularly in the North, i.e. many of the features of ME must have been in use already in OE, at least in the spoken variety of the lower strata of speakers (since the language of the small monastic and aristocratic elite was probably much closer to the written language.) However, the innovations never entered into OE writing, due

Linguistic variation 73

to the maintenance of a standard by a small, powerful literate elite who controlled this medium across centuries, mainly to cultivate and preserve Anglo-Saxon culture and to ensure that it was passed on as unchanged as possible. In other words, the written language represents an idealized version of the language of a small elite, because the OE texts are all literary texts that display artificial stylistic and linguistic features. Some exceptions to the general resistance against the use of innovations that deviated from the written standard exist and document that the spoken language must have diverged from the written standard already during the OE period. The late West Saxon standard, for instance, shows a few ‘normalizations’, such as the attrition of phonological contrasts with unstressed syllables or the loss of case distinctions with deictic pronouns (Tristram 2002: 119). Also, tenth century Northumbrian interlinear glossing was a little more receptive of innovations than the standard, as is evidenced in the Lindisfarne Glosses (Southern Northumbria). Furthermore, one may observe an increase in the number of lexical base forms which were unmarked for case/number in early OE, but which had been marked in Common Germanic (e.g. a-stems in the NOM and ACC sg, u-stems in the NOM sg). In this sense, the usefulness of the distinction between late OE and early ME might indeed be questioned since ME represents the unbroken continuation of a trend that had been in progress already in OE. Nevertheless, the ME period is the time when the morphological changes surfaced in writing, due to the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon elite by William the Conqueror after the Norman Conquest.27 Therefore, the full extent of the most important innovations can be found in the texts of the ME period only: next to the morphological changes mentioned above, also the loss of most of the OE prefixes as discussed by Hiltunen (1983) surfaces only in those texts that are traditionally classified as “Middle English”. Thus, the rejection of the division into OE and ME and the postulation of an unbroken continuation of English is justified only when we look at its development from one particular angle, namely its use as a spoken medium and thus the communicative function of the language. 2. Linguistic variation The labels Old English and Middle English should be understood as cover terms for a set of language products which all have a common point of reference, the ‘written standard’. As a standard, OE and early ME are codi-

74 The corpus & methodology fied, fixed forms used for a particular purpose, namely the transmission of knowledge or cultural heritage from one generation to another by means of written documents. ‘Old English’ is therefore not “a language”, but one variety among many others (dialects, diastratal variants etc.) and, from the perspective of historical linguistics, the most important one, as it is the only one that was codified. In this sense, the labels Old English and early Middle English stand for aggregates of different diatopic, diastratal, diaphasic and diachronic varieties, which are connected by congruent or similar phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical properties. In order to account for the fact that speakers use different norms and rules of different subsystems of a particular language and thus master different “functional varieties within one language” (Hymes 1972: 274), the data that result from a corpus-based research should be based on a systematic classification and organization of the corpus texts according to their geographic origin and the origin of the scribe, different registers, which may be aligned on a scale ranging from low to high formality, and/or different genres. However, in the present study ‘time’ is used as the only variable that determines the presence or absence of derivational suffixes and/or the extent (or frequency) to which these are used. Diastratic variation was irrelevant for the present study since OE was the standard used by a small literate monastic and aristocratic elite that controlled the production of written texts, i.e. there are no documents in Old English that allow for the compilation of a corpus based on different social milieus or social ranks occupied by the producers. A study of the use of derivational suffixes in different registers and genres would certainly have been interesting since several studies have shown that some affixes tend to be more frequent in some type of discourse than in others (see e.g. Lüdeling and Evert 2005 for the use of -ity; Baayen 1994 for a general account on the relation between text type and derivational productivity, or Plag, Dalton-Puffer and Baayen 1999). However, such an analysis would have been too fine-grained for the purpose of the present study, which is the documentation of the use of Germanic suffixes from OE to early ME in general. The relevance of text types (genres) is accounted for by including different text types in similar ratios into the corpus, which form a bundle of texts that represent a particular subperiod. Diatopic variation was the only variable that could have been correlated with diachronic variation since texts from different dialect areas may display remarkable differences not only in spelling, but also in grammar and morphology. Thus, the North of England was generally more innovative

Selection of the texts 75

than the South during the OE and ME periods, which means that Northumbrian and Kentish were the dialects with the strongest opposition to each other. Geographical variation will, however, also be neglected in the present study. In spite of the different dialectal areas “Old English” was uniform in the sense that it was kept relatively constant over the entire period. As Tristram (2004: 89) states, the oldest texts from Northumbria (seventh/eighth century) and the late West Saxon texts (eleventh/twelfth century) show “surprisingly little typological change of the grammatical structure of the language”. From the documentation of the Benedictine Reform by Kornexl (2000) we may infer that the theocratic elite of late AngloSaxon England deliberately enforced the standardization of Old English as a means of political control, above all when it was exposed to the threat of political disintegration through the Vikings.28 Written standard Old English began to dissolve only during the reign of Henry I, i.e. between 1000 and 1135, which corresponds to the periods OE2 and OE3 in the present study.29 The cultivation of the standard became less relevant and eventually meaningless when the Anglo-Saxon elite was replaced by the Norman ruling class, although it survived the Norman Conquest for something like two generations since Anglo-Norman had not yet been enscripted (Clanchy 1989: 58). When English re-emerged in writing in the twelfth century, it was the spoken language of the formerly repressed low variety of AngloSaxon that came to be used in writing and thus rose to the status of a regionalized middle class written language (Tristram 2004: 104). To conclude, the OE written standard may be regarded as a transgeographic norm, used and controlled exclusively by a small Anglo-Saxon elite formed by members of the monastic and aristocratic strata. In spite of possible dialectal differences with respect to the predominating encoding type of lexical information, the differences were certainly only moderate. Furthermore, since the question of a possible shift towards analyticity in the lexical domain has remained open so far, it seems to be more adequate to start with general observations before focusing on the developments in particular dialects. 3. Selection of the texts The selection of the texts that were included into the analysis was determined by the intention to create a corpus with a balanced ratio of different text types. Both OE and early ME offer a variety of text types, which can

76 The corpus & methodology be classified as (1) religious treatises/instructions, (2) chronicles (history), (3) prose, (4) glosses, (5) homilies, (6) laws, (7) poetry/verse, (8) travelogues (geography), (9) letters, and (10) handbooks (incl. astronomy). For each of the periods, texts from at least three different genres were selected in order to guarantee that the data are representative of the language in different subperiods. Table 2 lists all texts and the number of words that were examined in present study. The texts are categorized according to the historical period in which the copy was produced. Information on the respective edition used can be found in the bibliography. Table 2. Overview of the corpus texts OE1 (700–950) Chronicles:

a. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - MS Parker (until the entry for 900) b. Alfred: The History of the World (incl. Othere & Wulfstan) c. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of The English People: Intro, Ch. 1

10.170 8.000 13.200

Chronicle/ Travelogue: Alfred’s Orosius Laws: Laws of Alfred and Ine

11.000 8.170

Total number of words

50.540

OE2 (950–1050) Homilies:

a. Ælfric’s Homilies: The Homilies for the proper of the season (VIII-XVII) b. Wulfstan’s Homilies Travelogue: Alexander’s Letter Chronicle: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: (continuation) MS Parker (A) 901–1070 Prose: Apollonius of Tyre Verse: a. The Dream of the Rood b. from The Exeter Book: The Seafarer, The Ruin, The Wanderer c. The Battle of Maldon d. Beowulf (I–XX) Total number of words

14.000 5.700 8.000 3.500 6.700 1.115 1.750 2.160 6.450 49.375

Selection of the texts 77 OE 3 (1050–1150) Chronicle:

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - MS Peterborough (1122–1131) Anglo-Saxon Prognostics The Salisbury Psalter Aelfric: First Letter to Wulfstan Old English Homilies MS Bodley 343

Handbook: Gloss: Letter: Homily: Religious Instruction: The Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn (Cotton Vitellius A.xv) Total number of words

4.374 16.710 6.000 4.250 11.675 7.000 50.010

ME1 (1150–1250) Chronicle: Religious Instruction: Verse: Homilies:

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Peterborough Continuations (1132–1154) Hali Meidhad Vice and Virtue Layamon (until line 1200) a. Ormulum (Secundum Lucam I, until line 2000) b. Sawles Warde

Total number of words Total amount of words (OE1–ME1)

2.400 9.200 11.000 11.200 10.560 6.040 50.400 200.325

The text types that represent the different subperiods were selected randomly and differ from one period to another in order not to bias the study by selecting only a small number of specific text types for all periods. The different text types are not represented to the same amount in the different periods, which is due to the fact that the present study was supposed to be based on as many complete texts as possible, rather than including merely the beginning of the texts. This procedure worked well for texts like Apollonius of Tyre, Alexander’s Letter, Hali Meidhad or for poetry, which all did not consist of more than 10,000 words. However, texts like Beowulf, Layamon or The Ormulum were too long to be included in full length, but they could not be excluded either since they constitute highly important

78 The corpus & methodology literary products of the respective periods. In order to include at least a representative part of these texts, related to the overall length, the amount of text chosen in these cases exceeds that of other texts that were also considered as representative for a particular period. As a rule, a minimum of ten per cent of the entire text was included with longer texts. 4. Methodology: Identifying of nominal derivatives in the texts All instances of nominal suffixation and zero-derivation were detected by means of manual inspection. They were extracted from the texts and inserted into a data file in which they were listed as instances of one of the five conceptual categories distinguished in this study (see Chapter 3). In times where tagged corpora are available, a manual inspection of the texts might seem unnecessarily time consuming. However, this method proved to be the only appropriate procedure for the selection of zero-derived forms and to avoid the pollution of the data through the inclusion of words which end in a consonant that resembles a suffix, but which are simplexes, e.g. nouns with -D (weoruld ‘world’ vs. fierd ‘journey’, from faran ‘to travel’), -EL (engel ‘angel’ vs. stypel ‘tower’, from stæppan ‘to step’) or -EN (ofen ‘oven’ vs. hengen ‘that on which anyone is hung’, from hangian ‘to hang’). Furthermore, the classification of the derivatives into one of the five conceptual categories required an inspection of the context in which these occurred in order to identify the referent in those cases where several interpretations were possible. Therefore, a manual inspection of the texts proved to be more reliable than an electronic search. The data presented in the present study are based on nouns that can be analyzed as transparent from a synchronic OE perspective, i.e. nouns which represent the result of the application of a specific suffixation rule. A test procedure that yields rather reliable results concerning the transparency of a particular word-form is one that is based on the following criteria: Criteria used for determining the transparency of a derivative (1) Categorical Meaning: The affix in a derivative should represent or indicate a clearly identifiable categorical meaning. (2) Semantics: There should be a plausible semantic relation between a derivative and the respective lexical base without strong idiomatic changes of meaning. The lexical base must be attested in a given period.

Methodology: Identifying of nominal derivatives in the texts 79 (3) Form: The derivative should not exhibit any type of formal change of the lexical base that is not productive any more in a given period (e.g. ablaut patterns and umlaut in OE).

(1) refers to the degree to which a derivative is decomposable into several units of meaning. A word-form is unlikely to be transparent for speakers if the affix involved cannot be associated with a particular function or categorical meaning since it undermines the perception of a word-form as complex in form and meaning. (2) refers to the semantic predictability of a derivative. A derivative usually belongs to a different conceptual category than its lexical base, but part of the meaning of the lexical base must be still inherent in the derived word-form. Only productive processes exhibit a close relation between base and derivative and thus a predictable change in meaning. Therefore, the presence of a lexical base in a given period is a prerequisite for a derivative to be analyzed as transparent: only those formations can have served for new derivations following the same pattern that were based on existing lexical bases. The existence of a lexical base for OE derivatives was cross-checked with two reference tools, the AngloSaxon dictionary by Bosworth and Toller (1969 [1898]) and the online version of the Toronto Corpus of Old English Texts. For ME, the dictionaries by Stratman (1967 [1891]) and Kurath et al. (1952-2001) were used. This procedure follows Marchand’s ([1955] 1974d: 174) claim that in diachronic analyses of word-formation products the synchronic element must have its place as well because a certain combination must be analyzable in order to be ascribed to a particular derivational process that is or was productive in a given period. An apparently complex word-form for which no lexical base can be attested cannot be analyzed as complex since a combination of an affix with an unattested base is not a combination of two linguistic signs in the sense of Saussure ([1915] 1959: 144): “L’entité linguistique n’existe que par l’association du signifiant et du signifié.” (3) refers to formal changes related to a derivational process. In OE formations with -el like crupel ‘cripple’ (from creopen ‘to creep’) or byrel ‘messenger’ (from beran ‘to carry’), for instance, cannot be analyzed as transparent from a synchronic OE perspective since the i-umlaut that these forms exhibit had already become an unproductive phonological process before OE came into existence (Kastovsky 1992b: 425; 2006a: 171). Furthermore, the /i/ sound which had caused the Umlaut cannot be reconstructed for this suffix (only very archaic word-forms exhibit the original suffix form -il). A lexical base may have existed, but the change of the stem vowel, which had become

80 The corpus & methodology unproductive, obscured the derivational relation between the verbal base and the derived noun. In the present study, such forms were included only if the respective suffix was also attested with word-forms that did not exhibit a formal change of the lexical base and if criterion (2) was fulfilled (e.g. -D: faran ‘to go, move’ – faro ‘journey’, huntan ‘to hunt’ – hunta ‘hunting’ vs. lang ‘long’ – leng ‘length’). The reason for this procedure is that it cannot be excluded that derivatives which exhibited a formal change of the lexical base strengthened the representation of a suffix that also occurred with derivatives that did not exhibit such changes, thus contributing to the activation of this suffixation pattern. In other words, the nouns which exhibited umlaut did certainly not serve as models for further formations as they formed a closed class in OE, but they formed a cohort of nouns that may have supported the degree to which the suffix was used for the derivation of synchronically transparent (base-invariant) formations. In spite of these well-defined criteria, it may occasionally be difficult to determine the degree of transparency of a particular base-affix combination in historical studies, due to the existence of lexicalization processes. Lipka (1977: 158) states that lexicalization is “the gradual adoption of additional, idiosyncratic semantic features”, which means that word-forms may pass through different stages on a scale that ranges from full compositional meaning to full lexicalization, with intermediate stages like ‘slightly lexicalized’ or ‘more heavily lexicalized’. This makes it difficult to find clear cut-off points that allow for a separation of transparent word-forms from entirely opaque ones: a word-form may have started to change its status and move from one end of the continuum to the other (i.e. towards full lexicalization) over time and thus has to be included into the analysis of one period, but must be excluded the subsequent one. In this sense, judgements on the degree of transparency of word-forms may sometimes remain rather intuitive in studies on historical word-formation. 5. Documentation of the results For the quantitative description of individual OE and early ME noun suffixes the schema presented in Figure 5 was used. The head of the table indicates the ‘name’ of the suffix, which is written in small caps in order to account for the different spelling variants that occurred in the corpus. Below, information on the word-formation process that the respective suffix represents is indicated by means of a formula. The formula indicates the

Documentation of the results 81

word-class and the conceptual category of the lexical base and the wordclass and category of the derivative, thus reflecting the semantic rule that underlies all formations with this suffix. In the example (Figure 5), the suffixation process induced a shift of the lexical base from the category Person to that of Abstract. -HAD N [Person]

tokens types

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

4 3

5 7

10 9

8 8

N [Abstract]

OE1: mæghad 2, camphad, cnihthad Figure 5. Example for the documentation of the data

Next, the results of the quantitative analysis are indicated. The upper figures indicate the number of tokens, the lower ones the number of types of derivatives that occurred in the corpus texts in each of the four subperiods. They refer to the overall frequency of word-forms with the respective suffix and do not indicate which of the formations found in each of the subperiods are merely repetitions from earlier periods and which of them are new nouns, i.e. nouns that had not occurred in any of the preceding periods. The number of new formations among the overall types will be indicated at the end of each chapter. The presentation of the frequency of individual suffixes is accompanied by information on the origin, the morphological behavior, and the semantic range of the derivatives. All word-forms found in the different subperiods are listed under the table. Those which are new, i.e. which did not occur in any of the preceding periods, are highlighted. Since the present study is based on an analysis of OE and early ME noun suffixes according to five conceptual categories, the type and token frequencies of the suffixes will be counted for individual functional domains, that is, for the different categories which the suffixes indicate. This procedure pays tribute to Bauer’s (2001: 199) claim that polysemous affixes should be semantically subclassified “when questions of productivity are concerned.” The idea that a suffix may be involved in different derivational processes does not imply that one has to distinguish different, homophonous suffixes, e.g. -EL1, -EL2, -EL3. Rather, a suffix that derives nouns which belong to more than one conceptual category is regarded as a polysemous suffix that underwent an extension of its indicative function.

82 The corpus & methodology Such extensions have been documented e.g. by Booij (1986: 506), who suggests that affixes represent a ‘core prototypical meaning’ from which several extensions are possible, as in the case of Dutch -er, which derives personal agents, but within the course of time also came to derive impersonal agent nouns and instruments. Munske (2002) discusses the generation of subfunctions of the German noun suffix -ung. The original meaning of derivatives with this suffix was ‘action, process’. Some word-forms, however, adopted a more concrete meaning, denoting persons performing the action denoted by the base verb. The new meaning component was, over time, extracted from the single nouns that represented it and associated with the derivational process ‘X + -ung’ in general, thus giving rise to further word-forms with the new meaning. original pattern: X + -ung  Action, Process (e.g. Bespechung ‘consultation’, Räumung ‘clearance’) submodel: X + -ung  Person (e.g. Bedienung ‘service’, Leitung ‘administration')

The accumulation of word-forms with the new meaning may thus induce a reanalysis of a derivational process in general, leading to the formation of secondary meanings with particular suffixes. Such extensions or new subpatterns can become predictable, even cross-linguistically, as Dressler (1986: 524) has shown for the case of agent noun suffixes in different languages. The author assumes a hierarchy of principles that motivate the following diachronic extension of meaning for agent noun suffixes: Agent

Person

Instrument

Location/Source

The fact that a particular affix may have several meanings is also supported by Plag (1999: 49), who states that word-formation processes “tolerate a high degree of affixal polysemy”. Thus, current approaches to affixal polysemy tend to regard the different meanings of a particular affix as part of the semantic profile of affixes.

Other criteria guiding the empirical analysis 83

6. Other criteria guiding the empirical analysis 6.1. Compounds with complex determinatum Compounds in which the determinatum is a derivative that occurs with different types of determinants, as e.g. -berend (from beran ‘to carry’) in æscberend, grberend ‘spear-bearer’, are counted as one type of formation with a particular suffix, since the lexical base is the same in all occurrences (here: ber-). The same holds for pairs of prefixed and unprefixed forms: unrihtwisnesse and rihtwisnesse are one type of -NESS with two tokens, since the suffix is attached to the same lexical base (rihtwis-). 6.2. The dividing line between suffixoids and suffixes A major problem for the analysis of Old English and early Middle English suffixation is the occurrence of morphemes which exist both as free lexemes and as second elements in compound forms, as it is the case with -ÆRN, -DOM, -HAD, -LAC and -RÆDEN. The different classifications and the introduction of different terms to capture the status of particular morphemes that occur both as free lexemes and as bound morphemes in the same period result from different sets of criteria used for the classification of a morphological element as a suffix. For some authors, the mere existence of a free form next to the bound one excludes the classification of the latter as a suffix. This idea is implied in Koziol’s ([1937] 1972: §458) claim that -hd could be analyzed as a suffix only after the independent form died out. Other authors use semantic criteria to assign the status of a suffix to a particular element: if the meaning of the free form does not correspond to that of the element in determinatum-position and if the latter developed a more general, abstract ‘word-formation meaning’, then it is a suffix. The present study will follow Dietz’s (2007) approach, which is based on the following principles. First, the mere existence of a free counterpart does not exclude the analysis of a particular morpheme in compound forms as a suffix. What is more important is the semantic relation between both occurrences of the same lexical morpheme. We may speak of a suffix when the following condition is fulfilled: Erst wenn es [ein lexikalisches Morphem] eigene Wortbildungsbedeutung entwickelt, die sich von der aktuellen Bedeutung des zugrunde liegenden Lexems in einer Weise unterscheidet, daß die Bedeutung des Wortbildungs-

84 The corpus & methodology produktes nicht mehr mittels des Wortinhaltes des zugrunde liegenden Lexems paraphrasiert werden kann und wenn dieses seine Basisfähigkeit verloren und damit auch sein Distributionsverhalten verändert hat, ist die Entwicklung zum Suffix abgeschlossen, gleichviel, ob das zugrunde liegende Lexem noch wortfähig ist oder nicht. (Dietz 2007: 158) [The development from a lexical morpheme to a suffix is finished only when the respective lexical morpheme developed a particular wordformation meaning. This meaning must be different from that of the free morpheme in such a way that the meaning of the word-formation product cannot be paraphrased with the semantic content of the underlying lexeme. Moreover, it must have lost the ability to serve as the base for derivational process, thus having undergone a change of its distributional behavior. In this case, it does not matter if the lexical morpheme underlying a derivative may still be used as a word or not.]

In other words, the decisive criterion for the classification of a lexical morpheme as a suffix is the difference in meaning between the free form and form occurring in compounds. The difference in meaning becomes apparent when the meaning of the compound form in which a lexical unit occurs as determinatum cannot be explained from the meaning of the free variant. However, a second criterion should be considered as well, namely the formation of paradigms: a lexical morpheme can be classified as a suffix or as fulfilling suffix-like functions only if it is used to form a larger set of structurally and categorically similar words. The quotation above implies that the shift is a gradual one: an element develops (“entwickelt”) a wordformation meaning and changes (“verändert”) its distributional properties. Thus, the development may extend over a longer temporal period, which makes a clear-cut distinction between suffix and free lexeme impossible. The term suffixoid or affixoid has become established to account for those elements which have started to develop suffix-like properties, such as semantic generalization and adoption of categorical meaning, combinability with a larger set of lexical bases, and reduction of occurrence as a free lexeme. The term is also used by Dietz who, however, suggests that suffixoids should not be treated as a category on their own. Rather, the development of the functions of a suffix can be documented for different “functional groups” of a particular lexeme, the term referring to different morphological patterns (e.g. attachment to verbs vs. attachment to nouns) and semantic rules (attaching to nouns denoting persons vs. attachment to other types of nouns). Thus, a morpheme may function as a full lexeme in one group, i.e.

Other criteria guiding the empirical analysis 85

all word-formation products must be analyzed as compounds, whereas in a different functional group all word-forms can be interpreted as the result of a rule-governed word-formation process in which the lexeme functions as a suffix. An example given by Dietz (2007) will illustrate the procedure. D#m occurs as free lexeme and as determinatum in several combinations in OE. In compounds with adjectival determinants d#m assumed the function of an abstract noun suffix already around 900 since the new formations are nominalizations of adjectives and thus reflect a word-formation function of d#m.30 With nominal determinants, d#m occurred with three types of nouns: (1) nouns which denote the social status or rank of a person and which are formed from a determinant that denotes a person (abbodd#m, bisceopd#m, lareowd#m), (2) nouns that denote a property or the activity of the person denoted by the determinant (martyrd#m, owd#m ‘servitude’), and (3) nouns which denote an abstract concept and thus a state: flamd#m ‘the status of a fugitive’, hæfted#m ‘imprisonment’. It is only with nouns of group (2) that d#m fulfilled the function of a suffix in OE since it was only in this domain that it had a purely abstract and general meaning that significantly differed from the meanings of the free lexeme (‘doom, judgment, law, condition, rank, order’). In all other cases, either the meaning of the determinatum d#m coincided with that of the free form d#m, or the number of new creations is minimal and does therefore not indicate a productive use. These formations should be analyzed as compounds. D#m may be analyzed as a full suffix from the early eleventh century on, although the free lexeme continued to be used until the thirteenth century. Generally, the development from a suffixoid to a genuine suffix is finished when the meaning of the bound form does not coincide with that of the free lexeme in all occurrences and if it adopted a category-indicating function. The distinction between formally and semantically different groups of nouns proposed by Dietz makes it possible to document the gradual development of suffix-functions with morphemes that occur both in free form and as determinatum in various combinations with other lexical bases. Formally, they occur both as suffixes and as free lexemes, but they display properties of either one or the other type of morpheme in different functional groups, i.e. their status is not as undefined as the traditional, general perspective suggests. Furthermore, the approach illustrates that the development from lexeme to suffix is not strictly linear, but a process that depends on the function of the element in different formal (e.g. the word-class type of the base) and semantic contexts.

86 The corpus & methodology 6.3. Zero-derivation Next to overt marking of conceptual categories, also phonologically unmarked processes of marking were included into the empirical analysis of OE and early ME suffixation. Zero-derivation is defined here as the modification of a lexical base with respect to formal (change of word class) and semantic properties (new conceptual category) without overt marking, e.g. OE fyll-(-an) ‘to fell, cut down, destroy’ – fyll-ø ‘ruin, death’. Zeroderivation is regarded as a morphological process here and not as an instance of syntactic conversion since in OE the derivative adopted the inflectional properties of its new word-class and since a change in meaning occurred. Zero-derivation is, as suggested by Marchand (1969), assumed only in those cases where it parallels suffixation in the sense that the same type of change in meaning and word-class brought about by a zero-morpheme is expressed overtly in other contexts. In the present study, a noun was analyzed as a zero-derivative only when the lexical stem exhibited properties of two different word-classes and when it occurred with two different categorical meanings without any formal change involved. Excluded are nouns which are morphologically unmarked, but which exhibit stem-alternation triggered by e.g. i-umlaut or palatalization (and subsequent loss of the suffix that caused these formal changes), and nouns derived from one of the several ablaut grades of verbs, as e.g. rd ‘road’ from r!dan ‘ride’ or w#p ‘lamentation’ from wepan ‘to wheep’. Derivation from ablaut grades of the verb and processes that induced a formal change of the lexical base had already been unproductive when OE started to be documented in written form, hence the word-forms one may find in OE were inherited from pre-OE periods and are not indicative of a synchronically productive process to extend the lexicon. In OE, productive instances of zero-derivation of nouns were based on the infinitive stem of weak verbs only, which indicates that the morphological system of English tended to become base invariant. Biese (1941: 407) refers to this process as the establishment of a “universal verb-stem”. With this new pattern, it became more difficult to recognize the derivational relation between verb and noun since the base was the same for both: weard- ‘guard’ – weard-(-ian) ‘to guard’ or gebeorg- ‘that which protects’ – gebeorg-(-an) ‘to protect, shelter’, stig- ‘way’ – stig-(-an) ‘to climb’. The word class and the categorical meaning (dynamic process vs. physical entity) were indicated only implicitly by means of the inflectional pattern assigned to the lexical base, which was either a nominal or a verbal one.

Productivity in word-formation 87

The present study will make use of Marchand’s (1964, [1963] 1974b) semantic-based approach for the analysis of zero-derivatives since it may be used for tackling two problems: (1) the question of whether two homophonous bases are related at all and (2) the question of the identification of the derivative and the base, i.e. the derivational relation. The guiding principle is as follows: if the semantic analysis of one member of a pair depends on semantic features of the other member, it is the derived word. If, on the other hand, the semantic analysis of a member does not depend on semantic features of the other member, i.e. if the word may be defined independently from the other one, it is the base word. Thus, taking the pair bore (N) : bore (V) as an example, the semantic features of the noun are not needed for the content analysis of the verb: to bore is not ‘acting as a bore’, but ‘to make someone tired or uninterested’. The noun bore, in contrast, depends on the semantic features of the verb: a bore is someone who performs the act of boring someone else, i.e. to act in a way that bores another person. The same holds for the relation whistle (N) : whistle (V) or empty (A) : empty (V). In the latter case, the verb must be derived from the adjective since empty (V) is a causative verb meaning ‘causing X to become empty’, whereas the definition of the adjective does not depend on the semantic features of the verb: the quality of being empty is is not the result of the act ‘to empty’. Furthermore, the meaning of the verb is more complex than that of the adjective, which suggests that it is the derivative.31 7. Productivity in word-formation Productivity can be defined in different ways, but the common core of the various definitions is that it refers to the statistical readiness with which an affix enters into new combinations (as defined by Bolinger 1948: 18). The productivity of a word-formation process can be determined quantitatively, and several ways of calculating the productivity of a process have been proposed in the past 30 years. For Aronoff (1976) the index of productivity of a given process is the ratio of possible words to actually attested ones, which indicates that some processes appear to derive more new word-forms than others. For Baayen and his colleagues (Baayen 1992, 1993; Baayen and Lieber 1991; Baayen and Renouf 1996) hapaxes constitute a central element in the various ways of measuring productivity. According to Baayen (2009) hapaxes represent the type of formation with the weakest traces in lexical memory, which means that the processing and the produc-

88 The corpus & methodology tion of these forms is likely to be based on rule-driven processes. The identification of hapaxes is used to compute the probability of finding an unattested word among the derivatives with a particular affix: P = n1/N (n1 = number of hapaxes, N = number of tokens). This ratio, which is called the ‘category-conditioned degree of productivity’ (Baayen 1993), estimates the growth rate of the vocabulary with respect to a particular affix. The method has several shortcomings and requires the inspection of an extensive corpus, which is often either not available for particular periods of a language, or simply unmanageable for certain studies, such as those based on manual inspection of corpus texts.32 Therefore, the most frequently used method to determine the formative power of affixes is the calculation of attested types and tokens with an affix at a given point in time, which is also the one used in the present study. The so-called type frequency is indicative of the extent to which an affix is used in different formations. However, it is indicative only of past or realized productivity, because it merely indicates the number of existing words. In order to avoid the type frequency to be based on repetitions of word forms only, i.e. on nouns that had occurred already in any of the preceding periods under investigation, also “new formations” were calculated for each suffix in the present study, that is, nouns which appeared for the first time in a given period in the corpus (not in general!). This procedure made it possible to explore whether the type and token frequencies of a particular suffix were based on older word-forms that re-occurred in the corpus texts, or whether the suffix occurred with a variety of different base forms in different periods. Generally, productive derivational processes are characterized by the presence of large numbers of low-frequency forms, i.e. they exhibit a small difference between token and type frequency, whereas unproductive processes tend to exhibit many high-frequency forms. Baayen (2009) claims that this phenomenon is due to the fact that words with low frequency keep a rule alive since the comprehension and the production of these forms is likely to be based on rule-driven processes, i.e. speakers are required to segment the derivatives. This, in turn, strengthens the existence of the rule and thus the use of the respective affix (Plag 2003: 123). For highfrequency words, in turn, speakers tend to have strong memory traces, which decreases the functional load for production and comprehension. In this case, the underlying rules are less likely to be applied, which facilitates the development of idiosyncratic meanings.

Productivity in word-formation 89

A high number of new formations (types) certainly reflects the usefulness of a rule to the language community. The difficulty in restricting productivity to frequency, however, consists in the fact that frequency is an indicator for realized productivity only, thus reflecting past achievements. Other measures, such as expanding productivity, which assesses the rate at which a morphological category is expanding and which indicates the contribution of a morphological rule to the growth rate of the total vocabulary, or potential productivity, which measures the potential for expansion, are not possible on the basis of mere frequency counts of occurrence (Baayen 1993).33 Consequently, frequency is only one among several aspects of productivity: a high realized productivity does not imply that its expanding productivity or its potential productivity will be high as well (Baayen 2009). A low realized productivity, in turn, does not automatically mean that the potential productivity of a process is low as well. Thus, it is not clear that a process is ever entirely unproductive since existing patterns may occasionally be the base for some new formations. Some or most of these may never become established and, as Bauer (1983: 64) states, is it often pure chance that some formations become established in a later period. In view of the various factors that determine the productivity of a given word-formation process, a study like the present one cannot make use of the term ‘productivity’ since it is only based on the frequency of attested forms with a particular suffix and does not include hapaxes. Therefore, the term ‘frequency’ will be used whenever reference to the diachronic development of suffixes is made. This restriction does, however, in no way affect the goal of this study, which is the reconstruction of the realized productivity of suffixes in OE and early ME and not the prediction of expanding or potential productivity.

Chapter 5 Category 1: Person

1. Introduction The suffixes investigated in this chapter were all used for the derivation of nouns denoting human individuals in OE and early ME. Thus, the decisive criterion for the inclusion of nouns into the category Person was not the semantic role of a derivative, such as Agent or Patient, but merely the type of extra-linguistic entity it referred to: whenever a derivative denoted a human being, the suffix it contained was listed as a member of the category Person. Derivatives denoting persons were mostly derived from verbs in OE. The verbal base could, on the one hand, provide a sense of dynamics, indicating that the referent is actively involved in a process by acting upon some entity or having the potential to cause a change of state. Examples are nouns like ehtend ‘persecutor’, fulluhtere ‘helper’ or hunta ‘hunter’, i.e. formations based on dynamic verbs. This corresponds to an agentive reading of these nouns. On the other hand, the derivatives could, particularly if they were based on a state verb, also denote individuals that were not characterized by the action they perform, but which were defined by their social position, a particular role they assumed in a specific situation, or by particular attributes related to a position in society. Nouns of this type were e.g. wita ‘one who knows’, ymbsittend ‘someone sitting around’, or crupel ‘cripple’. Furthermore, denominal nouns denoting individuals tended to denote the state which the referent was in at a particular moment in time, e.g. hæftling ‘prisoner’, or they denoted a particular role in society, such as dryhten ‘ruler’. The following list represents all exponents of the conceptual category Person used in OE and early ME in alphabetical order (the capital letters indicate the suffix as such, representing all spelling variants that occurred in the corpus texts): -D (-d, -t, -), - EL (-el, -ol, -l), - EN, -END, -ERE, -ING, - LING, -OR, -Ø (zero).

The frequency of occurrence of each of these suffixes will be indicated below. Next to the figures, information on the morphological and semantic

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 91

properties of nouns with a particular suffix will be provided. Word-forms in bold are new forms, i.e. they did not occur in any of the preceding periods. 2. Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 2.1. -D -D represents the variants -d, -t, and - which, according to Kastovsky (1992a: 384) constitute a suffix family. One might consider -d and the fricative variant - as two independent suffixes, as Pilch (1979: 111, 113) seems to assume. However, the data indicate that a distinction between -d and - based on the different types of base words these select (-d: deverbal, -: deadjectival) does not hold since there was a number of deverbal formations with - to be found in the corpus, which speaks against a strict complementary distribution (see also Kastovsky 1985: 232). The three variants of -D go back to a Proto-IE suffix family based on the stem-formative -t- to which various vocalic extensions were added (e.g. -ta-, -to-, -ti-, -tio-, -tu-).34 A certain correlation of these stem-formatives with particular semantic patterns can be established for IE, but not for OE.35 The loss of the vocalic elements is the result of the levelling of unstressed vowels in the Germanic languages and their coalescence with case/number endings. The consonantal alternation is due to the fact that part of the members of this suffix family were affected by Verner’s Law, namely those which were stressed in the pre-Germanic period. Later sound changes and assimilation processes led to the alternation of the variants -d, -t and - found in OE. Kastovsky (1985: 233) detected certain distributional tendencies in OE: -d occurs mainly after roots ending in a semivowel, liquid or nasal (e.g. fluwian ‘to flow’ – fl#d ‘flood’), - after stops, and -t after fricatives (gifan ‘to give’ – gift). However, the large number of exceptions from these tendencies in OE suggests that an entirely complementary distribution cannot be claimed for this period any more. Morphology -D was used to derive deverbal and deadjectival nouns of all three genders. Since the suffix could occur with a linking vowel, the root vowel of the base could be affected by i-umlaut if the linking vowel was -i-, as in e.g. son – (ge-)siht (> *ge-sih-it) ‘sight’ or faran – fierd (> *fier-id) ‘company,

92 Category 1: Person army’. Otherwise, the base word remained without mutation, e.g. brecan – brec ‘break’. The deverbal nouns were derived from both strong and weak verbs. Usually, the morphological base form of the verb was the infinitive stem; exceptions are derivatives from strong verbs of classes I to IV, which tend to be based on the past participle and preterite plural forms. Semantics The suffix was the most polysemous suffix of all OE noun suffixes as it is the only one which derived nouns of all five conceptual categories. Next to person nouns, the suffix was also used to derive nouns denoting objects (gifan – gift), locations, actions (weorcan – wyrht ‘work’) and abstract concepts. The majority of the nouns denoting persons found in the corpus refer to a group of people sharing a particular social status, membership to a particular group, occupation or genetic relation: hyrd fierd dugu mæg

‘court’ (hyran ‘follow, serve, obey, be subject to’) ‘army, company’ (faran ‘to travel’) ‘all who have reached manhood, multitude, army, nobility’ (dugan ‘valere’) ‘a collection of mægas, a family, stock’ (mæg ‘a relative, kinsman’ > magan ‘to be strong’)

The second type of nouns with -D denoted individuals on the base of their social function, e.g. hæle ‘hero’ (haelan ‘to protect, save, heal‘), scrift ‘confessor’ (scr!fan ‘to confess’). As the data in Table 3 indicate, the contribution of -D to the extension of the OE and early ME lexicon with respect to nouns denoting persons was rather small and contrasts to the much higher frequency of derivatives with -D in other categories, above all Action and Abstract. The high token frequency, compared to the small number of types, and the fact that there was no new formation to be found in ME1 suggest that this suffix occurred with repetitions of word-forms from older periods only and was progressively eliminated from the inventory of Person-noun suffixes. It can therefore be concluded that the suffix did not contribute to the extension of the lexicon with nouns of this category. According to the data, it survived in one fossilized word-form into ME.

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 93 Table 3. Frequency of -D -D

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

52 12

66 6

3 3

30 1

V, A  N [Person]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

hyrd, fierd 51 dugu 6, fierd 33, ferh 3, hæle 18, mæg 3, wyrhta 3 hird, scrift, wirht ferd 30

2.2. -EL The suffix goes back to the Proto-Indo-European stem-formative -l-, which was extended by linking vowels and other stem-formatives and thus occurred in forms like -il, -ol, -ul, -els (Sauer 2001). As for -D, there are no indications for a semantic difference between the different formatives of -lin OE. In the corpus texts, only the suffix variant -el occurred with nouns denoting individuals. Morphology -EL was attached mainly to strong verbs, but there are also derivatives from weak ones. As Kastovsky (1985: 236, 1992a: 385) states, the preponderance of strong verbs as bases for derivatives in -EL suggests that many formations had been quite old at the time OE came into existence since the strong verbs belonged to the older stratum of the language. This impression is supported by the fact that most of the derivatives found in the corpus exhibit i-umlaut (e.g. beran ‘to carry’ – byrel ‘messenger, butler’). However, there were also formations based on weak verbs, which suggests that -EL was at least moderately productive in OE. -EL derived nouns of all genders, but with nouns of the category Person the masculine gender predominated. Semantics -EL exhibited a high degree of polysemy since the derivatives could denote persons, objects, locations or actions. According to the data, the strongest

94 Category 1: Person group was that of nouns denoting objects. The Person-nouns with -EL attested in the corpus refer to occupation or social function, as e.g. bydel ‘herald’ (b#dan ‘to command’) and byrel (beran ‘to bear’), or serve as a label for a person for who a particular behavior or way of acting is characteristic, as ME crupel ‘cripple’ (creopen ‘to creep’). Table 4. Frequency of -EL -EL

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

3 2

1 1

2 2

V  N [Person]

tokens types

-

OE2: bydel 2, byrel OE3: rynel ME1: drivel, crupel

The number of derivatives with -EL was very low, compared to both the frequency of other suffixes deriving nouns denoting persons and to derivatives with -EL that belong to other categories. The two formations attested for ME are both new (within the corpus) and suggest that the suffix did not entirely cease to be used for the creation of new nouns denoting persons. However, its use for new creations as well as the general frequency of the derivatives were minimal. 2.3. -EN According to Sprockel (1973: 42) this suffix represents various older suffixes from West-Germanic: -innja, which was used to form neuter nouns and which is preserved e.g. in OE fæsten ‘fortress’, -innj#, which formed concrete and abstract feminine nouns, and -ina or -ana, which formed masculine agent nouns and thus nouns of the type discussed in this chapter. Morphology -EN was used to derive nouns from nouns and verbs, in the latter case from both weak and strong ones. The derivatives in the present study are without i-mutation, although Kastovsky (1985: 237) reports i-mutated word-forms

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 95

with -EN. According to Kastovsky (1992a: 385), at least the denominal formations (e.g. eod-en) were only residuals of past productivity and do not reflect the productive character of the suffix in OE, due to the “semantic irregularities”, i.e. the idiosyncratic character of these formations. However, with respect to the group of formations that denote persons a certain degree of semantic regularity can be recognized: many of them denoted persons in a ruling position and were formed from lexical bases that denoted groups of individuals (e.g. eoden ‘prince, king’ and od ‘a nation, people’, drihten ‘ruler, God’ and driht ‘a people, multitude, army’). Semantics The denominal nouns with -EN attested in the corpus denote the ruler of a group of people referred to by the base noun. The deverbal nouns tended to denote the status of a person, based on typical activities that the individuals were associated with: eowen ‘a female servant, slave’ (eowan ‘to serve’), egen ‘a servant, a soldier’ (egan ‘to take, to accept’). Table 5. Frequency of -EN -EN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

21 4

15 4

5 2

-

N [Person] N [Person] V  N [Person]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

cristen, dryhten 5, eowen 4, egen 11 eoden, dryhten36 2, egen 8, witen 4 cristen, egen 4 -

The frequency of occurrence of derivatives with -EN denoting individuals was very low, comparable to that of nouns with -EL. For ME1, no wordform was attested in the corpus, which suggests that the suffix was neither used for the creation of new nouns, nor preserved in fossilized word-forms. The suffix must have played a marginal role for the formation of new words already in OE, since the word forms found in all subperiods tend to be repetitions only.

96 Category 1: Person 2.4. -END -END fulfilled both grammatical and derivational functions: it marked the OE present participle and it was used to form deverbal nouns, all denoting individuals. A dividing line between present participles and Person-nouns is often not easy to draw since the nouns tended to be ad-hoc formations, often based on a momentary activity performed by the individual (e.g. ymbsittend ‘one sitting around some other entity’). In the present analysis, word forms in -END were included if the respective word unambiguously denoted a human being. According to Görlach ([1974] 1994: 82) the use of the suffix tended to be genre-specific: it is much more frequently found in legal and poetic diction than in other text types. Furthermore, the suffix was preferred over zero and -ERE for ad-hoc formations. The same observation was made by Koziol ([1937] 1972), who states that most of the OE nouns in -END were words occurring in sophisticated literary style and mostly in compounds, e.g. æsc-berend. Sauer (2007) confirms this impression on the basis of an analysis of nouns denoting persons in the Épinal Erfurt, and the derivatives found in the present study show the same tendency. Morphology The suffix -END formed deverbal nouns from both weak and strong verbs and was always added to the infinitive stem. The derivatives were all strong masculine nouns which were mainly inflected according to the OE a-stem class. The suffix did not cause i-umlaut and was often attached to complex bases, i.e. to prefixed forms (behealdend ‘person being in possession of sth’) and forms containing an adverbial particle (æftercweend). Semantics In Kastovsky’s classification (1985: 238) nouns with -END denoting persons occur in three categories, based on semantic roles: Agent (feerberend ‘feathered creature’), Experiencer (lufigend ‘lover’) and Objective (earfend ‘needy person’). Generally, the semantics of nouns with -END was very consistent: all of them can be paraphrased as ‘person who Vs’: ymbsittend ‘person/s who is sitting around’, lufigend ‘person who loves’, fultumiend ‘person who helps’. The activities which characterize the denoted person tended to be momentary, i.e. they had no general validity. In this sense, the

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 97

nouns did not denote a class of persons, but usually a particular individual within a specific context, and therefore tended to be deictic formations. Table 6. Frequency of -END -END

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

27 15

61 27

19 13

-

V  N [Person]

tokens types

OE1: æfterfylgend 6, behealdend, ehtend, eowend, feohtend, forhycgend, fortend, fultumiend, hælend 2, lifigend 4, ongeotend, reccend 2, sceppend, slæpend 2, wæccend 2 OE2: æftercweend, betend, buend 7, demend, fleotend, fremmend 2, fultumiend, garberend 2, gemiltsigend, giefend, hettend, hicgend, hæbbend 3, hælend 5, liend, lufigend, rædend 2, reordberend 2, sceawigend, sceotend 2, scyppend 3, welwillend 2, worigend, wrecend, wigend 4, waldend 4/ wealdend 6, ymbsittend 3 OE3: alysend 4, angyltend, yfelcweend, ehtend, ge/fylstend 3, gelifend, halsigend, hatigend, (ofer)sceawigend, wanigend, swurdwegend, scippend 2, scotigend

The suffix occurred rather frequently in transparent word-forms during the OE period, and the presence of a number of ad-hoc formations suggests that the suffix was regularly used in different combinations for the creation of nouns denoting persons. In the course of the ME period, however, the present participle ending -ende was substituted by -ing after both forms had merged in southern dialects. As the data indicate, -END was also lost in the function of a noun suffix deriving nouns denoting persons: all derivatives were eliminated in ME1, which suggests that from this period on the suffix was indeed “dead“. However, Dalton-Puffer (1996: 135) found 15 different types for ME1 and one for ME2 (1250–1350). The difference is due to the larger corpus which her electronic search was based on. According to her data, the suffix was entirely eliminated in ME3 (1350–1420). 2.5. -ERE The suffix was probably borrowed into Germanic from Latin loan words that contained the suffix -arius (Görlach [1974] 1994: 81). The Germanic

98 Category 1: Person form was *-arjaz/*-ærjaz, which developed into OE -eri and finally -ere (Sauer 2007: 150). The suffix is usually quoted as -ere in OE grammars although, as Kastovsky (1971: 289) points out, the form was -er-, since the final -e was one of the allomorphs of the NOM sg and thus an inflectional rather than a lexical element (comp. b#c-er-e ‘scribe’ NOM sg : b#c-er-um DAT pl). However, since the citation form of the derivatives with this suffix is -ere and since most of the previous studies used this form, it will be adopted here as well. Morphology -ERE was attached to nouns (b#cere, æscere) and verbs in early OE, but the derivation from verbs became dominant during the OE period. -ERE derived strong masculine nouns, which were inflected according to the a-stem class. It did not cause i-umlaut, but allomorphic variation of the stem in some cases, as in bacan – bæcere. This type of stem-variation was, however, rare, and in those cases in which it occurred one may also find the same derivative without these alternations, which suggests that it was irregular (see Kastovsky 1971: 289). The suffix did not have allomorphs. Semantics All derivatives with -ERE found in the corpus are nouns denoting persons. The suffix came to be used also for the derivation of nouns denoting objects from the second half of the ME period on, but in the corpus texts no such polysemy could be observed for OE. Some few formations with meanings other than Person exist, such as geligere ‘fornication, adultery’, which denotes an action, or stipere ‘pillar, support’ and sceawere ‘watch-tower’, which denote objects, but these are mainly translations from Latin (cf. Kastovsky 1971: 294) and thus do not allow for the conclusion that -ERE was regularly used for the formation of nouns of other categories, as it is the case in PDE. However, the fact that a small number of nouns denoting objects with -er occurred also in Gothic, e.g. waggareis ‘pillow’, and the observation that 2% of all nouns in -er in Early High German denoted objects (with 97% of them denoting persons, Scherer 2005: 128) suggest that the suffix started to undergo semantic expansion from very early on. The numerical dominance of nouns denoting persons in most of the Germanic languages suggests that its core function must have been the derivation of nouns denoting persons. The existence of nouns other than Person-nouns in

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 99

earlier stages of the Germanic languages thus indicates only the future semantic development of this suffix as a regular marker of the category Object, next to that of Person, as in PDE (e.g. mixer, sticker, container) or German (e.g. Aufkleber ‘sticker’, Anhänger ‘trailer’). The denominal formations with -ERE in OE denoted an individual either on the basis of an object it deals with, e.g. b#cere ‘scribe, instructor’ or fiscere ‘fisher’, i.e. someone who has to do with books or fish, or they are based on a particular feature or property that characterizes the individual and which is denoted by the underlying base, as in wcere ‘weakling’ from wc ‘weakness’. The semantics of the deverbal derivatives, in turn, is very regular: all nouns can be paraphrased as ‘a person who performs the action denoted by V’. Depending on the context, the action may be performed habitually, as a profession (mangere ‘merchand’, ‘trader’), in a particular moment, or during a restricted time span (ehtere ‘persecutor’, huntere ‘hunter’), implying repetition or not. Thus, the derivational process itself and the resulting word-form do not indicate the modalities according to which the action is performed by the denoted person. Table 7. Frequency of -ERE -ERE

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

25 12

28 11

37 17

17 9

V  N [Person] N [Object]  N [Person]

tokens types

OE1: andettere 3, cwellere 2, ehtere 3, fiscere 2, fugelere 2, geligere, geotere 4, hleapere, huntere, rædeahtere, (god)spellere 4, writere OE2: bocere 5, dihtner, fiscere 11, geogelere, mangere, sceawere, (god)spellere 4, trahtnere, wicnere, wacere, writere OE3: andettere 2, (horn)blawere, bocere 4, cwellere 9, ehtere 3, feohtere, fiscere 2, fulluhtere, grindere, hordere, mangere, rædere, (god)spellere 5, strutere, trahtnere, rowere 2, eahtere ME1: bindere, eawbrekere, forswerere, folgere 2, reuere 3/reaver 2, ridere, rupere 2, spellere 3, wohdemere

After -END, -ERE was the most frequent Person-noun suffix in OE1 and OE2 (see Table 7). From OE3 on, nouns in -ERE outnumbered those with -END and the suffix almost became a default marker for nouns denoting persons since all other suffixes of this category occurred either in fossilized

100 Category 1: Person word-forms only or were used for the derivation of a very restricted number of new nouns in late OE/early ME. The only derivational process that was as strong as suffixation with -ERE in OE3 and ME1 was zero-derivation. Interestingly, -ERE has never given up this status until PDE, i.e. even the adoption of a large number of Person-noun suffixes from French (see Chapter 13) did not result in a weakening of the formative power of this suffix. 2.6. -ING OE had two formally similar, but semantically different suffixes, -ING and the latter occurring with the two variants -ing and -ung, which may often lead to confusion in discussions of the two suffixes. The formal similarity is not coincidental, as both suffixes derive from one source, which is a Proto-IE /n/-formative + the extension */-ko-/ (Lass 1994: 201), resulting in the Germanic forms *-inga and *-unga (Sauer 2007: 153). In OE, -ING was used for the derivation of nouns denoting persons, whereas -UNG derived nouns denoting actions (gaderung ‘gathering’), abstract concepts, or locations (wunung ‘dwelling place’). The suffix -ING was originally used to derive nouns denoting the geographical or social origin of an individual and thus its membership to a particular gender, race or location. It was therefore often employed to create patronymics from person names, which explains why the suffix may still be found in fossilized form in surnames today (e.g. Downing, Browning etc.). UNG,

Morphology Nouns with -ING denoting persons were strong masculine nouns and derived from nouns (w!cing from w!c ‘bay’) and adjectives (earming ‘poor person’ from earm ‘poor’). Semantics Denominal nouns with -ING can be paraphrased as ‘belonging to N’ or ‘coming from, descending from N’. The basic meaning of the deadjectival nouns is ‘being A’. The OE noun cyning was excluded from the analysis. It was derived from the noun cyn ‘gender, kind, nation, people, tribe’ meaning ‘person belonging to particular gender, race or nation’, with the additional semantic

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 101

feature ‘being the head of N’. However, it should be analyzed as a lexicalized noun since in OE it tended to denote one person in particular, the king of a nation, and was therefore used like a proper noun and less so as one denoting a class of persons. The noun w!cing may be regarded as a loan word from Old Norse (vikingr), but it may also be an OE formation: as Sauer (2007: 154) argues, the fact that the noun is attested already in the Épinal Erfurt, which precedes the first Viking raids by 100 years, suggests that it is a native English formation based on the noun w!c ‘camp’. The original meaning was thus ‘someone who lives/comes from a (temporary) camp’. Table 8. Frequency of -ING -ING

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

20 3

27 3

-

1 1

N [Object]  N [Person] A  N [Person]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

æeling 18, ierming, wicing æeling 20, earming, wicing 6 niing

The figures in Table 8 suggest that the suffix did not significantly contribute to the extension of the OE lexicon. All formations tended to be repetitions, except for niing in ME1, but the inspection of a larger corpus might reveal that this noun occurred also in OE since it is very unlikely that the suffix was still in use in early ME: no new combinations are attested over the different periods and the derivatives found for OE are very few in number. Thus, the suffix was most likely an element that was preserved in a closed set of derivatives only. 2.7. -LING The suffix -LING is not simply a variant of -ING, although it is derived from it. According to Marchand (1969: 327) the suffix is an extension of OE -ING, being the result of a merger with the consonantal stem ending -l- of

102 Category 1: Person some of its most frequent bases, above all æeling and lytling. The phenomenon is not unusual: similar cases occurred in German, e.g. -ing : -ling or -er : -ler (Tischler, Sportler ‘sportsman’) and -ner (Lügner ‘liar’, Redner ‘speaker’), which came into existence by means of a merger with the final consonant of different lexical bases. These extended suffixes are called “Wuchersuffixe” or “Suffixerweiterungen” (‘extensions of suffixes’) in the literature and treated as independent suffixes and not just variants of the original suffixes since the meanings and the morphological behavior do not entirely coincide (Fleischer and Stepanova 1985: 119; Draeger 1996: 78). Morphology The criterion which justifies the analysis of -LING as an independent suffix rather than an allomorph of -ING is its occurrence with lexical bases whose stems do not end in the consonant -l. This was the case already in OE, as examples like deorling ‘darling’ (deor ‘dear’) or fihtling ‘fighter’ (fiht ‘fight’) show. Furthermore, the semantics of the derivatives did not coincide with that of nouns in -ING, since these did not denote the provenance or the membership of an individual to a particular group or tribe, but referred to more general characteristics of the referent (see below). The suffix derived strong masculine nouns from weak verbs, e.g. nidan ‘to force, compel’ – nidling ‘slave’, as well as from nouns and adjectives without causing i-umlaut. Semantics The meaning of derivatives with -LING is very regular since all nouns denote individuals exclusively. A suitable paraphrase for the deadjectival formations is ‘person characterized by A, being A’, e.g. lytling ‘one being small’. The deverbal nouns are patients and thus individuals who do not exert any control over the action denoted by the base verb, but are the objects of it (nidling ‘s.o. who is forced to do sth, a slave’ from nidan ‘to force, urge, compel’; hœftling ‘a captive’ from hæftan ‘to seize, arrest’). The suffix assumed a diminutive function in some contexts in ME, but not always, as nouns like deorling or hyrling show. As Koziol ([1937] 1972: 144) suggests, the diminutive function was imported into English via Old Norse loans since in ON this suffix was regularly used in this function. In late ME, most of the word-forms with -LING exhibited a pejorative connotation, e.g. manling, wormling, underling which was, however, absent

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 103

in OE as far as the data suggest. The negative connotation of such nouns is probably related to the occurrence of -LING with animal names from the middle of the thirteenth century on. However, as Zbierska-Sawala (1993: 46) states, it may also be associated with the cognitive dimension of SIZE, thus being related to the diminutive function of the suffix. In the case of English, -LING has come to be used for the derivation of nouns denoting the young of any animal, such as codling (1314), shearling (1378), nestling (1399) or duckling (1440) (Marchand 1969: 328). Zbierska-Sawala (1993: 46) suggests that the relation between small size and a pejorative meaning is due to the fact that “SMALL can be associated with qualities such as INNOCENT, BEAUTIFUL and correlate with meliorative meanings […] or it can be perceived as INADEQUATE, WEAK and have pejorative connotations.” According to her, “[i]t is the latter interpretation which seems to have led to the reinterpretation of the diminutive -LING as a pejorative suffix.” However, the addition of features which indicate an emotional shade in relation to the denoted entity with nouns in -LING cannot be observed with the derivatives found in the corpus of the present study. Table 9. Frequency of -LING OE1

-LING

OE2

OE3

ME1

11 5

2 2

N [Object]  N [Person] A,V  N [Person]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

3 1

-

nidling 3 feohtling 1/fihtling 2, hinderling 2, hæftling, lytling 3, yrling 2 deorling, horling

The figures in Table 9 indicate that the number of derivatives was rather low and fluctuated over the different subperiods, which suggests that they were not part of the core vocabulary and not among the more frequently used words in OE. In this sense, the contribution of word-forms with -LING to the OE and ME lexicon was rather moderate. However, there are no repetitions of word-forms among the derivatives found for each period, which indicates that the suffix was actively used for the creation of new types of nouns denoting persons: in all periods, the suffix occurred with

104 Category 1: Person different lexical bases. It is probably the lack of an agentive meaning of the derivatives that explains the low frequency of occurrence of derivatives with -LING, since most of the derivatives of the category Person tended to be agents. 2.8. -OR -OR goes back to IE *-ter which, according to Kluge ([1886] 1926: 17), was a widespread suffix in the IE languages (see also Sauer 2007: 134). It was preserved in all Germanic languages, predominantly in kinship terms (e.g. German Mutter, Vater, Schwester). Morphology The suffix was used to derive masculine nouns from adjectives (ealdor ‘an elder, parent, head of the family’) and nouns (beoror ‘that which is born, a fetus’, from beor ‘birth’). The derivatives belonged to the weak declension class in OE. Semantics The two nouns found in the corpus denote a masculine person and an unborn child. Table 10. Frequency of -OR -OR

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

4 2

10 1

3 1

-

N [Object]  N [Person] A  N [Person]

tokens types OE1: ealdor 3, beoror OE2: ealdor 8/aldor 2 OE3: ealdor 3

As the data show, the noun ealdor is, next to beoror in OE1, the only attestation of this suffix in transparent word-forms in the corpus. Ealdor is

Person-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 105

derived from the adjective ald/eald and was often used as determinant in compounds, e.g. ealdorman. The suffix can be considered as a fossilized remnant of past use in OE, at least within the category of Person-nouns, and one might argue whether -OR can be assigned the status of a suffix at all. Firstly, it occurred only in two word-forms of which one was a frequently used noun, i.e. it is very unlikely that language users recognized the status of the sequence -or as a suffix. Secondly, the suffix occurred in many word-forms that had lost their compositional character already at the time when OE came into existence, such as most of the kinship terms (broor, sweostor, moor), whose formation dates back millennia before. Thus, there were practically no models left which could have strengthened the application of the derivational process. 2.9. -Ø (zero-derivation) The derivation of nouns denoting persons without overt derivational marking was highly frequent in OE and early ME. The group of zero-derived nouns included deverbal nouns that originated from the mere deletion of the inflectional ending of the verb, e.g. feoht ‘fight’ – feohtan. Other types, such as nouns exhibiting ablaut or umlaut, were excluded from the analysis since a change of the root vowel based on these two processes was unproductive in OE (see 4.6.3). Their frequency of occurrence will be listed in the notes and indicates the extent to which such forms were preserved. The endings found with the OE word-forms, e.g. rac-a, dem-a, wig-a, look like derivational suffixes, but have to be interpreted as inflections indicating case/number since they are replaced by other endings in different syntactic contexts (e.g. DAT pl rac-um, wig-um). The morphological structure of the zero-derivatives is therefore ‘stem-ø-inflection’, e.g. rac-ø-a. Morphology The bases are necessarily weak verbs, as these do not exhibit stemalternation. The base form is always the infinitive stem. Semantics Zero as a hypothetical morpheme contributed a variety of meanings to the lexical base, which are difficult to classify into a fixed set of categories. A

106 Category 1: Person paraphrase for the derivatives therefore has to remain rather vague, the common meaning of the derivatives being ‘X performs the action indicated by V’. Table 11. Frequency of -Ø37 -Ø

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

48 10

71 24

34 10

15 5

V  N [Person]

tokens types

OE1: dema 7, flita 2, garsecge 2, hwita, midslæpa, wreca 4, ge/winna 7, ge/wita 15, wisa 2, eow 7 OE2: bera, boda, cuma 4, fara 6, flema, fruma 3, giefa 1/gyfa 2, gefylsta 2, (dæd)hata, læwa, ræswa, scytta, sceaa, secga 4, wiga 9, wita 9, wisa 2, wæl 4, weard 5, witega, wara 7, weald, wreca, eow 2 OE3: cuma, dema 6, hunta 4, sceaa 2, winna 3, wisa, ge/wita 10, witega 3, wierwyrd, eow 3 ME1: genge 2, wier-sake, swice 2, witege 8, winne 2

In all subperiods of OE, zero-derivation was almost as frequent as the most productive suffixes of the category Person, -END and -ERE. In ME, the frequency of occurrence of zero-derived nouns denoting persons decreased. 2.10. -ESTRE Kastovsky (1985: 240; 1992a: 386) lists -ESTRE as a “reasonably productive“ noun suffix in his discussions of OE derivational morphemes. It is described as a suffix that derived nouns denoting persons exclusively, mostly female persons (e.g. hoppestre ‘female dancer’, lærestre ‘female teacher’), although there were also formations which were neutral to the distinction of sex. The suffix -ESTRE was attached to verbal bases that denoted an action which could be performed by both men and women, e.g. wefan ‘to weave’ : webba ‘weaver’ – webbestre ‘female weaver’ or bacan ‘to bake’ : bæcere ‘baker’ – bæcestre ‘a woman that bakes’. However, the use of the suffix was rather irregular since it could not be attached to any verb in order to derive nouns denoting a person. Derivatives with -ESTRE seem to have been rare in OE: Sauer’s (2007) list of nouns denoting persons attested in the Épinal Erfurt, for instance, does not contain any noun

Summary 107

with this suffix. The suffix could also not be attested in any text of the corpus which the present study is based on. One explanation for the absence of derivatives with this suffix in many OE texts could be the geographical restriction in use: as Marchand (1969: 348) states the productivity of this suffix was restricted to the southern dialects. 3. Summary Table 12 provides a survey of the frequency of occurrence of the eight suffixes that were used for the derivation of nouns denoting persons in the corpus of OE and early ME texts, plus zero. It indicates the token and the type frequency of the single suffixes as well as the number of new formations, i.e. of those nouns occurring in each period that were not attested in any of the preceding ones. A corpus of 200,325 words is, of course, not sufficient to draw any conclusions on the average number of new formations, as with increasing corpus size the “new forms” might turn out to be older formations. However, this procedure makes it possible to find out to which extent the nouns with a particular suffix are repetitions of older formations or indeed combinations with a variety of different bases. In Table 12 the upper figures are the general tokens and types, the lower ones indicate the new formations (tokens/types) among all derivatives. Table 12. Frequency of OE and early ME Person-noun suffixes and new formations -D OE1 OE2

52/2 66/6 33/5 OE3 3/3 1/1 ME1 30/1 0/0

-EL

-EN

-END

-ERE

-ING

-LING

-OR

-Ø

0/0 3/2 3/2 1/1 1/1 2/2 2/2

21/4 15/4 5/2 5/2 0/0 0/0 0/0

27/15 61/27 52/24 19/13 14/9 0/0 0/0

25/12 28/11 12/8 37/17 10/9 17/9 14/8

20/3 27/3 0/0 0/0 0/0 1/1 1/1

3/1 0/0 0/0 11/5 11/5 2/2 2/2

4/2 10/1 0/0 3/1 0/0 0/0 0/0

48/10 71/24 57/20 34/10 5/2 15/5 5/3

The suffixes which exhibited the highest rate of general frequency of occurrence in OE and/or early ME, namely -END in OE2 and -ERE in OE3 and ME1, as well as zero-derivation, are attested with the highest number of new formations, i.e. the suffixes occurred with the largest variety of different nouns in the corpus. For example, out of the nine different types with

108 Category 1: Person -ERE found in ME1 eight are new word-forms, i.e. they are derivatives which did not occur in any of the preceding periods. The relatively high number of different formations with -END and -ERE indicates that the two suffixes, or rather the derivatives, were largely spread over the OE lexicon and thus contributed to the creation of morphologically related word families. The ME lexicon seems to have been much more restricted in this respect, since in early ME only -ERE can be said to have been used with some regularity for the derivation of new nouns denoting persons, whereas all other suffixes tended to be found in one or two new word-forms only. The figures also illustrate that the morphological variety which one might assume to have existed in OE, due to the existence of nine different suffixes, was characterized by large differences in the frequency of use for the derivation of new nouns: suffixes like -D, -EN and -ING tended to occur with the same word-forms in all periods. One may thus conclude that only -END, -ERE and -Ø were used with some regularity for the creation of new nouns denoting persons in OE, -ERE being left as the only suffix that occurred with some frequency in new word-forms in early ME.

Chapter 6 Category 2: Object

1. Introduction Nouns of the category Object denote non-human entities that are involved in the performance of a particular action or are the result of it. The referents are material entities which have a physical body and which are therefore potential objects for visual perception. The category includes nouns which, from a grammatical perspective, fulfill the semantic role of instruments, but also all derivatives that denote entities with a physical body in general. This includes substances (e.g. læcedom ‘medicine’) and essences since both have a material correlate in the extra-linguistic world and thus equal objects with a fixed physical shape. All of the OE suffixes used for the derivation of nouns denoting objects were also used to derive nouns of other categories, which may sometimes lead to ambiguity of the derivatives. In such cases, a clear identification of the referent depends on extra-linguistic knowledge and the knowledge of particular event schemas. The PDE suffix -er in coffee-maker, for instance, cannot assign the category Person to the syntagma ‘make coffee’ in a situation like, e.g. the preparation of coffee in an office, since extra-linguistic knowledge excludes the possibility that there is a category of persons who are responsible for or specialized in the performance of the action in this context. Thus, the category Object is more plausible in this context. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that in other contexts the derivative denotes a person, which means that in such cases -er assigns the category Person to the base form (“He is a real coffee-maker: he makes coffee all day long.”) Formal ambiguity is thus resolved by recurrence to the context and to extra-linguistic knowledge. The fact that many derivatives of the category Object derived from processes that were used to derive other types of nouns as well may also be due to a semantic change of single derivatives from one category to another. Thus, nouns denoting abstract concepts or actions may acquire more concrete meanings and come to denote objects, a phenomenon that is well attested in the literature (e.g. Panagl 1987: 146). The number of derivatives found in the category Object is, compared to those in the categories Person or Abstract, rather low. One of the most plausible reasons for this phenomenon may be the tendency of speakers to

110 Category 2: Object denote objects by means of simple lexemes first, as suggested by Brdar and Brdar Szábo (1991: 352). The observation that nouns denoting objects tend to be simple lexemes may be related to the strong tendency of such nouns to become lexicalized over time, by which the once complex structure of such nouns and thus the underlying derivational rule become obscured (consider the large number of nouns denoting pieces of dress with -EL in OE, of which only a minority can be analyzed as transparent, see 7.2.3). The fact that all of the suffixes deriving Object-nouns were semantically ambiguous suggests that for most of the suffixes the expression of the category Object was not the core function, i.e. all of the suffixes were used for the derivation of other types of nouns as well, and often the number of derivatives was much higher in other categories (e.g. with -DOM or -UNG). An exception is -EL. Nevertheless, all suffixes that occurred with nouns denoting objects in the corpus were included here since even a small number of Object-nouns with a suffix that occurs much more frequently in other types of nouns may indicate a possible extension of the semantics of this suffix and thus the adoption of a new core function. In OE, the following suffixes occurred with nouns denoting objects: -D, -DOM, -EL, -EN, -UNG, -Ø (zero).

2.

Object-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data

2.1. -D

For information on the origin and allomorphic variants of -D, see 5.2.1. Morphology -D was used to derive nouns mainly from verbs: almost all nouns of the category Object found in the corpus are deverbal formations, e.g. fluwian ‘to flow’ – fl#d ‘river’, gan ‘to own’ – æht ‘property, possessions’. An exception is the noun inno ‘stomach, heart, any internal part of the body’, which is based on a preposition (in(n) ‘in’). Semantics -D occurred with nouns of all conceptual categories in OE and was thus the most polysemous noun suffix. The nouns denoting an object covered a

Object-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 111

broad range of physical entities, the most frequent ones being the result/outcome of the action denoted by the base verb (ief ‘what is stolen’, gesceaft ‘creature, what is created’) and the object of an action (gift ‘present, gift’). One derivative, inno, denotes a part of the body. Table 13. Frequency of -D -D

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

1 1

19 6

16 8

2 1

V  N [Object]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

gesceaft daro 3, faro, flod 2, gift 5, ge/sceaft 6, ge/worht 2 æht 4, (an)fylte, gift, inno 3, gesceaft 4, wist, wyrht, ief æht 2

The frequency of -D with nouns denoting objects exhibits strong fluctuations and was generally rather moderate. It is rather unlikely that the suffix was used for the formation of new nouns in OE since the majority of the derivatives exhibits umlaut and thus represents a phonological change that had become unproductive before OE (which is also due to the fact that the /i/ element of the suffix variants is entirely irrecoverable for OE). The fact that only one derivative is attested for ME1 and that this derivative had occurred already in OE suggests that the suffix lost its formative power in this category in early ME at the latest. Dalton-Puffer (1996: 87) lists only abstract nouns with -th ( ‘grave’) or abstract concepts (cyned#m ‘any domain in which the judgment/law of the king is valid’ > ‘geographical territory governed by a king’) in OE. Such formations are nevertheless listed here since even a small number of formations denoting a location with these suffixes may be the starting point for an association with a locative meaning and thus trigger the establishment of a new functional pattern with these suffixes. One must, of course, distinguish between a semantic change of single derivatives, on the one hand, and a systematic use of a given affix for the indication of different categorical meanings, on the other hand. In the first case, only some single derivatives adopt a different meaning, which is a phenomenon that is not the object of word-formation. Only if an affix exhibits a systematic use for the expression of a particular word-formation meaning, thus being found with a larger set of words, and only if the meaning of at least some of the derivatives cannot be related the original meaning an expansion of its original semantics can be postulated. Due to the rather small number of derivatives denoting locations found in the corpus, it was difficult to find suffixes that produced larger sets of this type of nouns, thus being regularly used for the indication of the category Location. Therefore, all those suffixes were included into the analysis which were found with at least three different types: -ÆRN (-ern), -D (-d, -t, -), -DOM, -EL (-l), -EN, -UNG, -Ø (zero-derivation).

120 Category 3: Location 2. Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 2.1. -ÆRN The status of -ÆRN as a suffix is debatable since the morpheme occurred both as a free lexical morpheme meaning ‘place, closet, habitation, house’ and, with roughly the same meaning, as determinatum in compound forms, e.g. feohærn ‘treasury’. However, the frequency of occurrence as an independent noun was very limited in OE and clearly outnumbered by formations in which it functioned as the second element (determinatum) in compounds. The impression that ærn is a suffixoid, that is, a morpheme which occurs both as a free lexeme and as a bound morpheme with categoryindicating function, is supported by Bosworth and Toller ([1898] 1967: 18), who provide two entries for ærn, one for the free lexical morpheme and one for -ærn as a bound morpheme, stating that the latter derived from the noun ærn and was “generally used as a termination, and denot[ed] a place”. Thus, the authors distinguished between two formal variants of the same lexeme, one being a noun, the other one occurring in bound form denoting a general category, namely that of place. The case seems to be similar to that of d#m or ræden, which also occurred both as free lexemes and as determinata in compounds in OE and which adopted the status of suffixes only within a larger stretch of time. The problem of distinguishing between a suffix, a suffixoid and a free lexeme was discussed in Chapter 4, and Dietz’s (2007) criteria were considered to be most appropriate to account for the ambivalent status of suffixoids. One of the main criteria used for assigning suffix status to a morphological unit was the existence of a category-indicating function, which means that a lexeme undergoes a gradual loss of its lexical content and adopts an abstract meaning in certain contexts. In the case of ærn, one may observe the following tendency: in some compound forms it occurred with the more specific meaning ‘house’, ‘building’, ‘room’ and closet’ (see (1) below), but in other formations it occurred with a very general meaning, simply denoting any type of place related to the object that the base noun denotes (see (2)). (1) -ærn with the more specific meaning ‘room, house’ breawern foldern gerefærn

‘a brewing place, brew-house’ ‘an earthhouse, a cave, sepulchure’ ‘a court-house’

Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 121 gæstærn healærn hordern hyddern/heddern mæelærn meteærn moldærn slæpærn tigelærn ryærn witeærn

‘a guest place, guest chamber’ ‘a house with a hall, palace’ ‘a store-house’ ‘a store-house, cellar’ ‘a house of meeting for speaking or consulting’ ‘a room for taking meals in’ ‘an earth house, grave’ ‘dormitory’ ‘building made of bricks’ ‘a splendid house, a palace’ ‘house of punishment, prison’

(2) -ærn used with the more general meaning ‘place’ blæcern eastern eorern feohern gangern winærn

‘an inkstand’ orig. ‘a place in the East’, adjective ‘eastern, oriental’ ‘grave’ (literally ‘earth place’) ‘a money-place, treasury’ ‘privy’ (literally: 'a place where one goes to' ‘a place where wine is stored, sold, or drunken; a feasting place’

Both readings are possible with the noun d#mærn, which may either denote the concrete place where a judgment is spoken, i.e. a court-house, or a judgement place in a general sense, i.e. a tribunal, but not necessarily a court-house. The list may be complemented with lexicalized compounds: blcern ‘lamp, candlestick’ or generally ‘light’, originally ‘place with light’ (from blc ‘light’), cweartern/cwartern ‘prison’, which has no attested base, carcærn ‘prison’, carc either being from LAT carcer or OE care ‘care’, and holmærn ‘sea-house, vessel, ship’ (holm ‘hill, rising ground’, but in poetry also ‘water, sea, ocean’). These formations appear transparent only from a formal perspective (except for cweartern, which has no attested base), but less so from a semantic one. Thus, with some nouns ærn occurred as a morpheme with full lexical content (‘house, room’), which suggests that these forms should be analyzed as compounds (as done by Campbell 1959: 155). The semantics of many other compound forms was, however, very general, since the nouns denoted any type of place, either a bounded (a house, a room) or an unbounded one. In this sense, the semantic contribution of ærn in compound forms was in many cases not more than that of ‘location’ in the widest sense and thus as general as that of a suffix. The shape or exact type of

122 Category 3: Location place of the referent (a room, a house, a hole or similar entities) remained unclear. Taking that the free lexical morpheme ærn denoted a specific, bounded place whereas the bound form denoted any type of place in the extra-linguistic world, one may classify the element as a suffixoid. As such, it should have exhibited a certain degree of productivity in the sense that it was used to create larger sets of formally and semantically related words. The types listed under (2) above reflect the systematic application of ærn to denote any type of place, which includes rooms, houses, or physically unshaped places in general. The morpheme ærn will therefore be considered as a suffixoid here, exhibiting the pattern ‘N + -ÆRN  noun denoting any type of place related to the entity denoted by the base’. Morphology The suffixoid derived nouns from nominal bases. It did not induce a formal change of the lexical base. The alternation -ærn : -ern is the consequence of a phonological change: in the second elements of compounds, with the reduction of stress, long æ could become e, as it was the case with all unaccented syllables (Campbell 1959: 155). Semantics As discussed above, -ÆRN was used to derive nouns that either denoted a house (e.g. tigelærn ‘building made of bricks’), a room (e.g. slæpærn ‘dormitory’), or any type of place in general (e.g. eorern ‘grave’, blæcern ‘inkstand’). The type of location denoted by the nouns depended on the relation of -ÆRN to the base noun and was therefore unspecified, differing from one case to another. Thus, the noun winærn denoted a house where wine was either stored, sold, or drunken, and in the latter case the noun could refer to any place where feasts were held. The noun slæpern, however, referred to a room or a department within a house, but not to a house proper. Generally, the place denoted by derivatives with -ærn was either characterized by the activity performed in it (mæelærn ‘a house of meeting for speaking or consulting’ from mæel ‘an assembly, a judicial meeting, council’), by a particular type of objects found in it (feohern ‘money-place, treasury’ – feoh ‘goods, riches, wealth’; healærn ‘a house with a hall, palace’ – heall ‘a hall’), or by physical properties (ryærn ‘a splendid house,

Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 123

a palace’ – ry ‘power, strength’), including the material it was made of (eorern ‘an earth house, grave’, tigelærn ‘a house made of bricks’). Table 20. Frequency of - ÆRN -ÆRN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

4 4

-

-

N [Object]  N [Location]

tokens types

-

OE2: healern, winærn, ryærn, meduærn

The occurrence of nouns with -ÆRN was rather low and restricted to one subperiod. The element could have developed into a suffix specified for the indication of the category Location since it had no other meanings, thus undergoing a development similar to that of -DOM and -SCIPE within the category Abstract. However, for reasons unknown -ÆRN was entirely eliminated from English already in late OE since no word-form is attested from OE3 on. A formally identical form continued to exist in the periods following the OE one with adjectives that indicate position in geographical space, e.g. southern and eastern. 2.2. -D The suffix was used to derive nouns of all five conceptual categories in OE and thus also nouns of the category Location. The number of formations denoting locations was, however, rather small. Morphology Nouns with -D denoting locations were derived from verbs and nouns, and most of them exhibited a change of the vocalic nucleus of the lexical base (e.g. ymbhweorfan ‘to surround’ – ymbhwyrft ‘surrounding space, orbit’). Semantics The derivatives denoted an extended territory, i.e. a larger geographical space (mæg ‘country, province’, ymbhwyrft ‘orbit’).

124 Category 3: Location Table 21. Frequency of -D -D

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

2 2

3 2

7 2

-

V  N [Location]

tokens types

OE1: mæg, ymbhwyrft OE2: mæg, flod 2 OE3: embhwyrft 1/ymbehwyrft 4, flod 2

According to the data, the suffix was not used for the derivation of new nouns denoting locations from early OE on, since the derivatives are practically the same in all subperiods. The fact that -D continued to be used for the derivation of a small number of new formations of Abstract-nouns in early ME suggests that it underwent a reduction in its semantic range, by which the semantic incoherence of the derivatives (they could denote either an object, a person, an action or a location) was eliminated. Since there are no new formations with -D denoting locations attested throughout the OE and ME periods, one may conclude that the attested word-forms are merely remnants of a once productive word-formation rule involving this suffix.

2.3. -DOM The suffix derived from the noun d#m ‘doom, judgement, law’, and both the free morpheme and the bound form with suffix functions (=indication of categorical information) occurred throughout the OE period. It is therefore difficult to draw the dividing line between an interpretation of the formations with d#m as compounds or as suffixed nouns. The problem will be discussed more in detail in ch. 9. At this point, it should be sufficient to state that all combinations with d#m were included in the present study as they document the increase in use of d#m as a bound morpheme Morphology Within the category Location, the suffix derived nouns from nouns denoting persons: biscop ‘bishop’ – biscopd#m, eorl ‘earl’ – eorld#m ‘earldom’. Due to its “young age” (historically speaking) and thus in accordance with

Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 125

the emerging word-based type of morphology, the suffix did not cause any change of the base form and did not have any allomorphic variants. Semantics The suffix played only a minor role for the formation of nouns denoting locations. Its main function was the indication of the category Abstract. However, a couple of OE nouns in with this suffix refer to concrete places rather than abstract, immaterial entities. This semantic extension might be explained with the adoption of a concrete sense of abstract nouns, in which -d#m had the meaning of ‘doom, judgment, law, jurisdiction, state’. Since jurisdiction implies a locative component, due to the fact that a law holds within a bounded space or territory only, the extension in meaning from ‘sphere where a jurisdiction/law/state is valid’ to a geographical concept of place itself seems obvious. In the case of the most prominent noun, cyned#m ‘kingdom’, the semantic change was one from ‘dominion of the power of the king’, referring to any sphere of influence of a king, to an exclusively locative reading. In contrast to Marchand (1969: 262), who states that -dom acquired the additional sense of territory only in ME, the data suggest that this sense already appeared during the OE period if, however, with a small number of nouns only. Table 22. Frequency of -DOM -DOM

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

4 1

3 2

3 1

1 1

N [Person]  N [Location]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

cynedom 4 cynedom, biscopdom 2 eorldom 3 kinedom

The low number of derivatives with -DOM denoting a location suggests that these are secondary formations, i.e. deviations from the regular abstract meaning of the derivatives, since the latter type clearly outnumbered the nouns that denoted a location. In other words, the locative reading derived from an underlying abstract meaning, being the result of the progressive

126 Category 3: Location acquisition of a more concrete sense. A similar development could be observed for nouns with -DOM denoting objects (see Ch. 6). The suffix may therefore not be regarded as a regular member of the inventory of suffixes indicating the category Location, but as an element that occurred with a fixed set of abstract nouns that acquired a locative meaning over time. 2.4. -EL Nouns with -EL occurred with a variety of meanings, basically those of Person and Object, but also that of Location. The suffix was inherited from Common Germanic and had originally been a stem-formative in IE, deriving stems from roots and thus fulfilling the function of indicating semantic information as well as word-class. It was reinterpreted as a suffix when root-based morphology was replaced by stem-based morphology during the Common Germanic period and stem-formatives were largely lost, either through syncope or through merger with case/number markers. The former function as a stem-formative explains why many nouns in OE ending in -EL cannot be analyzed as morphologically complex: in these cases the stemformative was reinterpreted as part of the stem, which disrupted the relation to the underlying base word. The suffix occurred with a number of spelling variants in the corpus of OE texts, mostly as -l, -el, -il, -ol, -ul, also -els and -le. The different forms cannot be assigned to different functions, which means that they can be regarded as variants of one suffix denoted as -EL here, thus forming a suffix group or ‘family’ (Kastovsky 1992a: 360). The preponderance of the spelling variant , especially in late OE, is due to the phonological weakening of the pronunciation of the different variants, by which they coalesced into one form /el/ (Sauer 2001: 299). Morphology In OE, -EL was used to derive nouns from both weak and strong verbs. Denominal formations existed, but they were much less frequent than deverbal ones. In one instance, the base-form is a preposition: yrel ‘hole’, which derives from the preposition urh ‘through’. Some of the derivatives found in the corpus exhibit vowel alternation, such as beorgan – byrgels, which suggests that the formations with -EL had been rather old already in

Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 127

OE. The vowel alternations may be due to either i-umlaut or the use of different ablaut grades as derivational base. Semantics Most of the derivatives denoted objects, which suggests that this was the main function of the suffix. Those derivatives which can be classified as members of the category Location tended to denote specific, non-extended places (setl ‘seat’, hydels ‘hideout’, byrgels ‘tomb, burying place’). Locative nouns with -EL represented the relation of a place to the action performed in this place, except for yrel ‘hole’, which is based on a preposition and thus denotes the directional component of an action rather than the action itself. The number of different types of nouns with -EL denoting a location is moderate (see Table 23). The high token frequencies for OE1, OE2, and OE3 are due to the frequent occurrence of the noun setl. Generally, the derivatives attested in the corpus tend to form a closed class, since more or less the same types reoccur in all subperiods. One can therefore conclude that the suffix was little if ever used for the creation of Location-nouns. Table 23. Frequency of -EL -EL

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

36 4

18 4

11 3

2 2

V  N [Location]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

byrgels, setl 30, staol, yrel 4: setl 11, staol 5, weal, yrel hydels, setl 9, yrel stael, hudels

2.5. -EN Morphology The suffix was attached to verbs (west-an ‘to lay waste’ – west-en ‘desert, wilderness’). Some derivatives exhibit umlaut.

128 Category 3: Location Semantics Nouns with -EN could belong to four conceptual categories, namely Person, Object, Abstract and Location. The nouns of the category Location denoted (1) buildings, (2) specific, non-extended places, or (3) extended space: (1) fæsten ‘fortress’ (2) birgen ‘grave’ (3) westen ‘desert’

fæstan ‘to fasten’ byrgan ‘to bury’ westan ‘to lay waste’

Only three different types were attested in the corpus, all of them exhibiting a relatively high number of tokens, which indicates that the suffix was preserved with a small number of highly frequent words only. No new types were added, i.e. the suffix did not occur with new formations in OE and eventually disappeared in early ME. As with -EL, we may assume that the suffix -EN did not play any role in the formation of nouns denoting locations in OE, but occurred in fossilized forms only, all of which were entirely eliminated in early ME. Table 24. Frequency of -EN -EN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

21 3

9 3

11 2

-

V  N [Location]

tokens types

OE1: byr(i)gen 6, fæsten 12, westen 3 OE2: birgen 1/byrgen 1, fæsten 6, westen OE3: byrgen, westen 10

2.6. -UNG The suffix occurred most frequently with nouns denoting actions, i.e. those of the category Action. Some nouns, however, referred to places where the action denoted by the base verb takes place, rather than denoting the action itself.

Location-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 129

Morphology The suffix -UNG was used to derive nouns from verbs (both simple and prefixed ones, e.g. gesomnung ‘synagoge, church’ – gesomnian ‘to assemble, collect’). It did not cause a formal change of the lexical base. Semantics Many derivatives with -UNG changed their meaning from that of denoting an action/event/process towards a more concrete meaning, thus denoting places (as listed here) or instruments (objects). The phenomenon is known also for the Modern German cognate suffix -ung. Paul ([1920] 1968: 99) labels this process ‘Konkretisierungstendenz’, by which he means that the typical non-material meaning of derivatives with -ung often tends to be changed into a concrete one. Examples from German are e.g. Festung ‘fortress’, Auszeichnung ‘reward’, and Kleidung ‘dress’, which all denote objects, or Umgebung ‘surrounding space’, Abzweigung 'turn-off', Siedlung ‘settlement’, and Erhebung ‘hill’, which denote locations. The tendency of originally abstract nouns to adopt a concrete meaning can be observed with OE -UNG as well since a small number of nouns with this suffix denoted a location. The phenomenon may still be observed in PDE, as examples like crossing and landing (-ing < OE -UNG) illustrate. The meaning of the derivatives denoting a location in OE was not uniform, with two nouns denoting a room (eardung ‘a habitation, dwelling’, wunung ‘dwelling place’), one a building (gesomnung ‘church’) and one a place in the exterior (cyping ‘market place’). Table 25. Frequency of -UNG -UNG

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

3 1

7 2

25 4

1 1

V  N [Location]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

gesomnung 3 eardung 2, wunung 5 cyping, eardung 17, gesomnung 3, wunung 4 wunung

130 Category 3: Location The frequency of nouns denoting locations with -UNG was rather low (see Table 25), and the derivatives tended to re-occur in all subperiods. Considering the much higher number of derivatives with this suffix in the categories Action and Abstract, the small number of nouns denoting locations suggests that these are all secondary formations, i.e. nouns that underwent a semantic change (‘Konkretisierung’ in Paul’s terms) from Action to Location. The suffix was therefore not regularly used as an indicator of the category Location.

2.7. -Ø (zero-derivation) Morphology Zero-derived nouns denoting locations were derived from the infinitive stem of weak verbs. Semantics The nouns denoted different types of locations, ranging from a place in the interior (cleofa ‘chamber, cell’) to an undefined place in the exterior (gemær ‘boundary, limit of land’, ræste ‘a place of rest’). Thus, as in all other categories the zero-derivatives allowed for a variety of meaning interpretations and analyses of the semantic relation to the base verb. Table 26. Frequency of -Ø -Ø

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

37 4

19 9

4 2

-

V  N [Location]

tokens types

OE1: fleot 6, geset 1/set 1, gemær 26, hid 2/hyd 1 OE2: cleofa 2, cy 2, hleow, hyd, gebeorg 2, gemære 6, geset 2, ræste 2, stig OE3: gemær 2, stig 2

Compared to the frequency of occurrence of zero-derived nouns in other categories, the process was rather uncommon as a means to derive nouns denoting locations in OE and ceased to be used in early ME, where no zero-

Summary 131

derived noun was attested in the corpus. Despite the low overall frequency, zero-derived nouns were the strongest group of nouns of the category. The disappearance of this word-formation device in early ME was only part of the general loss of all derivational processes in the category Location. 2.8. Minor formations Some suffixes occurred sporadically with nouns denoting a location in OE, but the number of attested forms was never more than one or two different types. The derivatives are forms that underwent a semantic change from a different pattern, which means that the suffixes had little or no potential of becoming regular exponents of this category. For the sake of completion, their occurrence will nevertheless be documented here. -NESS The suffix -NESS, which can be regarded as the default suffix for the derivation of nouns denoting abstract concepts, occurred in one deverbal formation denoting a location in OE1: wuneness ‘dwelling, habitation’ (wunian ‘to dwell, remain’). The verb also served as the base for a second derivative with the same meaning, namely wunung. Since nouns in -UNG occurred more frequently with the meaning Location than those in -NESS, wunung may have ousted the use of wuneness. -SCIPE One noun with -SCIPE denoting a location could be attested in the corpus: OE2: wæterscipe 2 OE3: wæterscipe.

The noun denoted a body of water, i.e. a place filled with water. Otherwise, the suffix was used to derive nouns denoting abstract concepts exclusively. 3. Summary The category Location comprised the smallest number of derivatives of all categories in all periods. The majority of the nouns attested in the corpus

132 Category 3: Location should be regarded as fossilized forms that were created in earlier periods, since the suffixes they contain were hardly if ever used for the creation of new types throughout the different subperiods of OE and early ME, i.e. the suffixes had limited formative power already in OE. Furthermore, none of the suffixes can be claimed to have been a ‘core’ suffix in the sense that it was specialized on the indication of the category Location and was thus frequently used to derive a considerable number of nouns. -EL and -Ø occurred slightly more frequently with location nouns than all other suffixes, but the difference is minimal and not indicative of a regular use. Table 27. Frequency of OE and early ME Location-noun suffixes and new formations -ÆRN OE1 OE2 OE3 ME1

0/0 4/4 4/4 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0

-D 2/2 3/2 2/1 7/2 0/0 0/0 0/0

-DOM

-EL

-EN

-UNG

-Ø

4/1 3/2 2/1 3/1 3/1 1/1 0/0

36/4 18/4 1/1 11/3 1/1 2/2 0/0

21/3 9/3 0/0 11/2 0/0 0/0 0/0

3/1 7/2 7/2 25/4 1/1 1/1 0/0

37/4 19/9 10/6 4/2 0/0 0/0 0/0

Three conclusions can be drawn from the figures presented in Table 27. Firstly, the expansion of the OE lexicon with respect to nouns of the category Location was very low in OE, which suggests that new names for places, buildings, and extended spaces came into life through means other than derivation, i.e. through word creation (“Wortschöpfung”), compounding, borrowing, or through analytic expressions, such as the use of periphrastic constructions involving prepositions (e.g. ‘house of the prefect’ instead of OE gerefærn, or ‘building made of bricks’ instead of OE tigelærn). Secondly, a large number of the derivatives found in OE was not used in early ME: only four transparent (but older) word-forms could be attested for that period in the entire corpus. Thirdly, no new nominal derivatives were found in this category in early ME. This suggests that the synthetic way of indicating the category Location disappeared in early ME.

Chapter 8 Category 4: Action

1. Introduction Nouns of the category Action are deverbal nouns that represent a process or instance of V-ing. The derivatives are usually nominalizations of verbs and denote several semantic shades of an activity, such as one specific instance of an action (e.g. plega ‘a play’, blæd ‘blowing’) or an action in a general sense (e.g. huntung ‘hunting’, fisco ‘fishing’). All derivatives imply a sense of dynamics, i.e. they refer to an event, process, or action with a temporal structure, thus implying duration and a more or less well defined starting and end point. The nouns have some affinity to nouns of the category Abstract in the sense that the referent is a non-material concept, i.e. one without a physical body in the extra-linguistic world. In the case of Action-nouns, the concept may become materialized only through agents who perform the action. The type of nouns discussed in this chapter overlaps with Marchand’s (1969: 33) “predication type”, a term which in his syntactic-semantic analysis of word-forms refers to the nominalization of the predicate. It also corresponds to Kastovsky’s (1985: 222) category ‘Action’, which includes nouns with the meaning ‘Fact, Event, Act, and Process’. The complete set of suffixes used for the derivation of Action-nouns in OE was as follows: -D, -EN, -LAC, -NESS, -UNG, -Ø.

2. Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 2.1. -D As discussed above, the suffix -D, which in OE occurs as -, -t, or -d, goes back to the IE stem-formative -t- which, due to a number of vocalic extensions, developed variants like -to-, -ti-, -t-, -o, etc. Already in IE, the most common variants of -D used to form deverbal abstract nouns were -tiand -tu-, e.g. OE gebyrd/OHG giburt ‘birth’ from the root *bher- ‘to carry,

134 Category 4: Action bear’. Both formatives fulfilled different functions, -ti- being related to objects and thus deriving nouns that denoted the progress of an action, -tubeing related to subjects and thus used for the derivation of nouns that denote an individual’s predisposition to perform an action (comp. LAT acti-# ‘(objective) action’ and actus ‘movement (of the subject)’ (Krahe and Meid 1967: 151). This difference may, however, not be observed any more in Germanic. In OE, a relation between the different stem-formatives that evolved from IE -t- (namely -d, -t, -) and a particular semantic pattern cannot be established. The absence of the vocalic extensions of the variants of -D in OE is due to the leveling of unstressed vowels and the merger with inflectional markers. The consonantal alternations derive from the fact that some of the members of this suffix family were stressed in pre-Germanic and thus affected by Verner’s Law. The various sound changes and assimilation processes that are related to the Germanic sound shift eventually led to the variants -d, -t and - (Kastovsky 1985: 233). Their distribution was most probably complementary, although exceptions existed (probably the result of analogical formations): -D

-d / after semi-vowel, liquid, nasal -t / after fricative - / after stops

(Kastovsky 1985: 233)

The stop alternants were most probably unproductive in OE because of two reasons: (1) they occurred more frequently with strong verbs, which were a closed class in OE, than with weak ones, and (2) they probably did not produce new formations. Nevertheless, forms with -t and -d were included into the present analysis whenever the base verb could be attested and a plausible semantic relation between base and derivative could be established, since in these cases the criterion of a morphological-semantic relation, which is indicative of transparency, was fulfilled. Morphology

-D was attached exclusively to verbs, both to strong and weak ones, e.g. fleon ‘to flee’ – flyht ‘flight’ and tilian ‘to strive to obtain, to labour’ – til ‘labor which brings gain’. The derivatives were predominantly feminine nouns, but generally all genders were represented in the corpus, which derives from the fact that the different variants of the stem-formative indicated different genders (and inflection classes) in pre-OE. The root vowel

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 135

of the base verb was affected by i-umlaut when the suffix was originally preceded by a linking vowel -i-: faran – *far-id – fierd ‘army’. Since this linking vowel was entirely absent in OE and umlaut was generally unproductive, such formations were fossilized. They were remnants of a derivational process that had certainly been frequently used before the OE period, judging from the large number of OE nouns with -D exhibiting umlaut. Semantics Nouns with -D denoting actions were rather frequent. They typically denoted a single instance of an action or an action in a general sense, implying repetition. The action tended to be one that extends over a larger time span (e.g. hunta ‘hunting’, fyrd ‘journey’, herga ‘plundering’). Table 28. Frequency of -D -D

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

28 12

52 16

34 12

8 3

V  N [Action]

tokens types

OE1: cwild, fæt, fiscna 2, flod 8, fyrd 2, byrd 1/gebyrd 1, gemynd, gesceaft, herga 2, hunta 2, sliht 4, gewyrht 1/wyrht 1 OE2: blæd 3, faro, fiscno 14, flod 7, folgo 2, frum, gebigd, ge/dwyld 3, byrd 1/gebyrd 4, gehnad, hwyrft, herga, sleaht 2/sliht 1, slæ, wyrht 2/ forwyrht 2/gewyrht 2, weofod 2 OE3: ærist, blæd, cwyld, ge/dwild 8, flod 6, gebyrd 4, hyn 6, hunta 2, sliht, til, wroht 2, geworht ME1: fluht, flod 6, slaht

The data indicate that -D was used much more often for the derivation of nouns denoting actions than for those denoting persons, objects, or locations. It is one of the most frequently occurring suffixes within the category Action in general. Many of the nouns with -D reoccurred in all subperiods, which suggests that the suffix was preserved in a variety of nouns and rarely used for new formations. This impression is also evidenced by the small number of derivatives that are based on (the historically younger) weak verbs, such as fulluht or fisco, which are opposed to the large group of nouns that exhibit umlaut. Furthermore, in all four subperiods the number of tokens is much higher than that of types, which is an indicator for a

136 Category 4: Action lack or progressive loss of productivity. This tendency was fully borne out in ME1, where only three formations occurred, two of which occurred frequently already in OE, the other one (fluht) being attested for the first time in ME1 in the corpus, but having been in use in OE as well, as the entry in the DOE and in the dictionary by Bosworth and Toller ([1898] 1967) suggests. Thus, the suffix was, if at all, rarely used for the derivation of nouns denoting actions in OE.

2.2. -EN Morphology The suffix was attached to the infinitive stem or the stem of the second participle of weak and strong verbs. The derivatives did not exhibit iumlaut. Semantics Kastovsky (1985: 23) states that the strongest group of derivatives with -EN in OE were Action nouns. This observation cannot be confirmed here: the data indicate a very low frequency of this suffix within the category Action. In contrast to all other suffixed nouns denoting actions, nouns with -EN are very close to an abstract reading since the actions denoted imply a low degree of dynamics: the nouns fæsten ‘to make fast’, gesegen ‘telling, saying’, swefen ‘sleep’ and wacen ‘a watch, vigilance’ are all actions which require less physical energy than many of the actions denoted by nouns with other suffixes of this category, e.g. -D (herga ‘plundering’), -LAC (reaflac ‘robbery, plundering’), or -UNG (hergung ‘plundering, devastation’, seglung ‘sailing’). The much longer list of “action nouns” by Kastovsky (1985: 23) confirms this impression: the list contains nouns like gehealden ‘observance’ (gehealdan ‘to observe’), ræden ‘rule, government’ (rædan ‘to rule, deliberate’), bycgen ‘buying’ (bycgan ‘to buy’) or s#cen ‘search’ (scan ‘to search’), which all imply a relatively low degree of physical energy needed for the performance of the action. According to the data in Table 29, the suffix was not used for the creation of new nouns denoting actions: with only two types occurring in each of the three subperiods the suffix can be considered unproductive. The high dif-

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 137

ference between token and type frequency, which is particularly characteristic for OE3, shows that the suffix survived in two or three frequently occurring nouns only. The noun wacen, which occurs for the first time in ME1 in the corpus texts, is therefore unlikely to be a new formation and might be found in texts of the OE period that have not been included into the present study. Table 29. Frequency of -EN -EN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

66 2

2 2

V  N [Action]

tokens types

3 2

-

OE1: fæsten 2, gesegen OE3: swefen 56, fæsten 10 ME1: fasten, wacen

2.3. -LAC Information on the origin of the suffix will be provided in 9.2.5. Morphology The suffix was used to derive nouns from nominal bases. It did not change the form of the base. Semantics The nouns denoted actions with a high degree of dynamics and involvement of physical energy: reaflac ‘robbery, plundering’, heaolac ‘battle’ and brydlac ‘the celebration of a marriage’. In the case of reaflac and brydlac, the base noun denoted a concrete entity (reaf ‘booty’, bryd ‘bride’) and the derivatives referred to the action related to or associated with the object. With heaolac ‘battle’, the suffix added a dynamic conception to the more abstract base noun heau ‘war’.

138 Category 4: Action Table 30. Frequency of -LAC -LAC

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

2 1

3 2

3 1

4 2

N [Object]  N [Action]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

reaflac 2 reaflac 2, heaolac reaflac 3 brydlac 3, reaflac

Only three different types are attested in the corpus for all four subperiods, one of which occurred in all of them (reaflac). It can thus be assumed that the suffix played only a marginal role for the formation of nouns denoting actions both in OE and in early ME, being used only sporadically in this domain. The restricted use of -LAC may be attributed to dialectal differences, since the suffix tended to be used more frequently in the Northern and Northeastern dialects than in others. The geographical distribution is, in turn, related to influence from Old Norse, which might have reinforced the use of OE -LAC by providing nouns with the Old Norse cognate -leikr. Evidence for this assumption comes from the fact that in ME most of the formations found in ME follow the Old Norse pattern (cf. Dietz 2007: 140). 2.4. -NESS The suffix goes back to an IE nasal formative combined with the basic form */-Vssu-/ (Krahe and Meid 1967: §125). It occurred in all Germanic languages, such as Gothic (e.g. gud-ji-nassus ‘priesthood’, Lass 1994: 202), and is still used in most of them, e.g. German -nis (Gefängnis ‘prison’, Ärgernis ‘annoying event’). The -n- was originally part of lexical stems (usually the infinitive or participle form) and later came to be associated with the suffix, similar to the development of OE -LING, which is a consonantal extension of -ING. Morphology The suffix was used to derive nouns from nouns (cwealm ‘slaughter’ – cwealmnysse ‘torment’, geliger ‘a lying with, fornication, adultery’ –

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 139

geligernis ‘adultery’) and from weak and strong verbs (ehtan ‘to persecute’ – ehtnysse ‘persecution’). Deadjectival formations existed as well, but they all denoted abstract concepts. In some cases, the base could be both the infinite stem and the participle form of a verb so that one often finds doublet forms, such as gedræfnes : gedræfednysse ‘trouble, disturbance’, or gemengnesse : gemengednysse ‘a mingling together’. There is no obvious difference in meaning between both forms. The suffix did not cause iumlaut. Some formations look like forms that exhibit i-umlaut, e.g. bebirgan ‘to bury’ – bebyrignesse ‘burial’, but a look at the lexical base reveals that sometimes two base forms existed in OE, e.g. bebirgan and bebyrgan, both with the meaning ‘to bury’. Semantics The suffix -NESS was the most frequently used suffix of all in OE and early ME, and the large majority of the derivatives belonged to the category Abstract, thus denoting a state or a mental concept. Some nouns, however, also denoted actions and are therefore listed in this section. The meaning of the nouns is diverse, most of them denote one single instance of V-ing. Table 31. Frequency of -NESS -NESS

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

39 21

18 5

18 11

-

N [Object]  N [Action] V  N [Action]

tokens types

OE1: bebyrignysse, cennisse, cwealmnysse, ehtnysse/ehtnesse 7, eleodignesse 2, forlædnisse, fremednis, frigenes 2, geornesse, gehwyrfednesse, geligernis, gemænsumnis, gemeng(ed)nesse 7, healdnesse, ofer/flownis 4, onfongnesse, onhyrenesse, onsægdnesse 2, symbelnesse, toslitnysse, wyrcness OE2: andetnys, asprungnis, ehtnysse 14, gescyldnysse, gehealdsumnysse OE3: ælednys 2, ætlætnys, andetnesse, blinysse, ehtnesse 6, forlætnys 1/forlætnisse 1, gedræfednysse, gescilness, stræcness, undereodnysse, upahafenness

During the OE period, the frequency of derivatives with -NESS fluctuated. The suffix was certainly used for new formations in OE since new types are attested for OE2 and OE3, i.e. one may observe a certain degree of varia-

140 Category 4: Action tion concerning the lexical bases. In early ME, however, no derivatives with -NESS denoting an action were attested, which means that the suffix ceased to be used for the extension of the lexicon with respect to nouns of the category Action, or at least underwent a heavy reduction in use in this domain. Since -NESS continued to be used for the formation of nouns of the category Abstract, the loss of the function as an indicator of the category Action may be interpreted as a functional specification and thus a specification of the meaning of the derivatives.

2.5. -UNG -UNG occurred with the two variants -ung and -ing, which both go back to an IE /n/-formative combined with an older stem-formative */-ko-/, which is also the source of the Person-noun forming suffix -ING. -UNG, which is discussed here, was used for the derivation of deverbal nouns and can be found in Common Germanic in the form *-inga/-unga (Munske 1964). Originally, the two variants seem to have been in complementary distribution, -ing(a) occuring with weak verbs of the first class and with strong verbs, -ung(a) occurring with weak verbs of the second class (Kastovsky 1985: 243). The data indicate that in OE the variant -ung predominated, whereas -ing became the only form during the ME period. In ME, the function of -ing was extended to that of marking the present participle, replacing OE -END (-ende). Morphology The suffix was used to derive nouns from strong and weak verbs, usually without i-mutation. Semantics The derivatives denote actions and processes of all kinds. All of them imply a dynamic meaning, with a clear beginning and end point of a particular action, process or event. A more specific description of the semantics of the derivatives is not possible since the actions or processes denoted include a wide range of activities that human beings may perform or are submitted to. One may roughly distinguish between actions performed by human beings, on the one hand, and actions, events or processes that do not have human

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 141

beings as their immediate agents, on the other hand, such as cwacung ‘a trembling, earthquake’ or glomung ‘twilight, gloaming’. The latter type predominated in the corpus. Table 32. Frequency of -UNG -UNG

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

70 38

77 39

145 62

74 44

V  N [Action]

tokens types

OE1: ælding, bærning, beofung 2, blotung, brosnung, clæsnung 2, costnung, cwacung, deagung, drohtnung, edniwung, feormung 2, forheriung 2, forscapung 2, gegaderung, gemyndgung, geomerung, geeahtung, gooung, glomung, gnornung, halgung 2, healsung, hergung 4, hreowsung, huntung, leasung 2, lysing, olecung, ondræding, onsægdnesse 2, sceawung 3, rowung 3, weorung, egnung 17, oncung 2, oncmeotung, reodung OE2: asmeagung, behafdung, beterung, costnung, drohtnung, elcung, eung, fæstnung 2, geendung 6, geearnung, gegaderung 2, gelaung 5, geomerung 6, granung, greting, halgung, herung 3, hiwung 2, hrepung 2, hwistlung, leornung, longung, mitting, morcnung 2, mynegung, ræding, rihtung, gesamnung 1/samnung 7, seglung, styrung 4, swerung 2, tilung, trymming, egnung 3, rowung 2, wanung, wundrung 2, wissung, weorung 3 OE3: bedding 2, bitung, blissung, bodung 2, bewerung 2, bireowsung, bletsung 2, ceapung 3, clænsung 4, clepung 1/clypung 3, cwylmung, dropung, ge/endung 5, ferrung 5/ fyrrung 2, forlæting, gearwung 1/gegearwung 1, gecyrring, gefægnung, gegaderung, gemeting 2, geswefrung, geomrung 1/geomerung 5, gesamnung 2, geswerung, geeahtung, girning 3, hadung, halsung, heftnung 4, herung, hwearfung 3, laing 3/gelaung, leasung, letting 6, mæting 3, midwunung 2, mynegung 2, offrung 2, ræding 2, repung, scrudnung, smerung 3, smeagung 2, somnung, styrung 5, teachung 3, tolising, tæling, trahtnung 2, tintregung, wanung 3, warigung, weorung 4/wurung 3, witegung 2, witnung, waxing 1/wexincg 1, enung 9/egnung 3, ingung, reagung, wifung 2, weardung, yegung ME1: acoverung, beginning, bireowsung 2, chivering, cluppung, cneling, cockung, drunkung, eggung 2, eting, fasting 2, felung 2, fluttung 2, fondung/-ing 6, fostrung 2, gadering/-ung 4, +eomerung, gi(e)tsing/-ung 3, herung, lokung, makung, nohtung 2, ofunchung 2, pining 2, rading, runing, rotung, shiffting 2, smechung, smellung, somnung 3, streonung 3, stikelung, swering, tiding 4, turnung, wanung 3, waxung, wemmung, weolewung, wepung, wraxling, wuring 2, ralung

142 Category 4: Action -UNG was the most frequently occurring suffix of all within the category of Action-nouns and one of the most frequently used suffixes in general during the OE and early ME period. The list of derivatives indicates that the suffix was used to derive a variety of word-forms and thus strongly contributed to the extension of the OE and early ME lexicon with respect to nouns denoting actions. The high flexibility of this suffix, which results from the fact that it could be attached to virtually any verb stem, made this suffix a sort of “default marker” of the conceptual category Action.

2.6. -Ø (zero-derivation) Derivation without formal marking was a common word-formation process in OE and a major word-formation device found in all conceptual categories. The phenomenon of zero-derivation goes back to the loss of stemformatives in pre-OE, which indicated the inflectional class and the wordclass of the lexical base. The stem-formative was formally recoverable only if it had left a trace by means of a phonological change in the root, such as i-mutation, or if it was reinterpreted as a suffix, as in the case of -EL or -D. The loss of the stem-formative led to a re-structuring of the morphological shape of the base word, which changed its status from that of a root to that of a stem. Thus, the inflectional marker was attached directly to a nonsegmentable lexical stem and not to a root + stem-formative combination, which means lexical bases were not equipped with a word-class specifying element (e.g. luf-ø-u ‘love’ NOM sg). This way, the base form came to be the same for nouns and verbs and only the respective inflection marker indicated the word class: base

stem-formative

inflectional marker

pre-OE

luf-

OE

luf-

-'j-uø

-an (V-INF) -z (N-NOM sg) -ian -u/-ø

Since the word-forms consisted of a base and an inflectional marker only, there was no derivational element left, which means that word-class was not represented overtly in or on the stem. Furthermore, the direction of the derivation could no longer be recognized formally.

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 143

Morphology As in all other categories only those derivatives were included into the analysis which were derived from weak verbs since ablaut was unproductive already in OE. An ablaut-form could thus not be the input to a morphological process from a synchronic OE perspective. Next to zero-derivatives based on simple stems, also derivatives based on prefixed verbs were included in those cases where the prefixed nominal derivative could be related to a prefixed verb, e.g. gelimpan ‘to happen, occur’ – gelimp ‘an event’. It should be pointed out that especially in the case of GE- the semantic difference between the simple and the prefixed form of a verb is, from today’s perspective, often unclear. In pairs like feohtan – feoht and gefeohtan – gefeoht, for instance, the difference in meaning was minimal, if there was any at all, at least towards the end of the OE period where many prefixes had lost their semantic content (see Hiltunen 1983). Semantics The prototypical meaning of zero-derived deverbal nouns was that of ‘single act, single instance of V-ing’. Table 33. Frequency of -Ø40 -Ø

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

213 23

166 28

150 25

132 16

V  N [Action]

tokens types

OE1: befeall, bigang 3/gang 4, bryne, ceas, fultum 54, fyll, gelimp, gefeoht 53, gewinn 52, geflit 3, gemet 6, geswenc, gild, hreow, plega 2, rest, slæp 2, slea, spræce 2/ sprece, wæcce 2, wæl 4, weorc 16, wig OE2: feoht 3/gefeoht 3, flit 1/geflit 1, fultum 17, fyll 2, )pgang 1/begang 1, geræd, ge/winn 20, gewealc 6, gemet 8, gelimp 8, gering, gebland, geflit, grap 4, gripe 5, heaf 4, help 4, mæl, ofslea, plega 10, ræs 3, sæcce 3, slæp 3, spell, spræc 8, wæl 2, weorc 25, wig 16 OE3: belimp, fare 2, fultum 16, gang, ge/feoht 11/gefiht, gewin 3, ge/flit 8, ge/cid 6, gripe, help 4, onræs, rip, sige, (up)stige 5, ge/swinc 22, sacu 7, sæcc, sprece 1/spræce 1, slæp 2, stæpe, swic 2, weorc 47, wyrc, wird, wig 3

144 Category 4: Action ME1: cume 19, fare 6, feht 2/fiht 21, gelimp 4, help 18, ræs, ride 2, stiche 2, slepe 3, speche 5, smite, ge/swinc 7, swing, weorc 11/werc 13/work 5/werk 5, win 3, wacche 3

Zero-derivation was the second most frequently used derivational process to derive nouns denoting actions, after suffixation with -UNG (see Table 33). However, the difference between token and type frequency is remarkable: the token frequencies are four (OE2, OE3) to eight times (OE1, ME1) higher than the type frequency. Such differences are an indicator for an extensive re-use of the same type of nouns and thus for a restricted productivity. However, only a small number of nouns tended to re-occur in the different subperiods, i.e. the nouns exhibited some degree of variation, which suggests a productive use of this word-formation device. The number of new types remained relatively constant over time, with a slight decrease in ME1 which is, however, not significant enough to claim a tendency towards the progressive disuse of zero-derivation in this category. 2.7. Minor processes

-EL The suffix -EL was found with two transparent nouns denoting actions in the corpus: swingel ‘a stroke’ (from swingan ‘to beat’) and weal ‘washing’ (from wean ‘to wash’). OE1: swingel 4, weal OE3: swingel 3

With two formations only, the suffix cannot be regarded as a regular exponent of the category Action. The nouns probably reflect a possible former productive use of -EL for the derivation of nouns denoting actions.

-ERE This suffix was a prototypical Person-noun suffix in OE, but it occurred also with two nouns denoting an action, namely geligere ‘a lying with, fornication, adultery’ and burer ‘a birth’. OE1: geligere 4 ME1: burer

Action-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 145

Otherwise the suffix did not produce any word-forms of this type, which suggests that -ERE should not be regarded as a suffix that was regularly used for the derivation of nouns of the category Action.

-OR -OR was a marginal suffix in all categories, and the derivatives had a variety of meanings, such as Person, Abstract or, as in the case of the noun moror ‘murder’ found in OE2, that of Action. The suffix is attested with a handful of words only in the entire corpus, which can be analyzed as fossilized remnants of former productivity. Thus, -OR can be regarded as dead.

-RÆDEN The suffix -RÆDEN (>-red) occurred rarely in the corpus and mostly with nouns denoting abstract concepts. One noun, however, referred to an action, which is ME1 manred ‘service paid to s.o. else (e.g. a tenant, the devil)’, which occurred with two tokens.

-SCIPE The suffix existed also as in free form as a noun with the meaning ‘state, condition, dignity, office’. Since the transition from the status of a noun in determinatum-position to a suffix is gradual, a clear dividing line between scipe as a noun, a suffixoid and a suffix proper cannot be drawn. For Dietz (2007), -scipe was a suffix already in OE, and this view will be shared here as well. The suffix derived primarily nouns denoting abstract concepts, but two nouns in the corpus denoted an event/process: OE1: gebeorscipe OE2: gebeorscipe 4 OE3: wurscipe 9 ME1: wurscipe 5

One may interpret these occurrences as derivatives that assumed a dynamic reading out of the originally static, abstract one, since the latter is the one which predominated in OE. With wurscipe (wurscipe) ‘worship’, both meanings seem to have co-existed and the choice for one or the other must have depended on the interpretation from the context in which these occurred. The classification of this noun as abstract resulted from the meaning ‘honor, dignity’, whereas it clearly denoted an action when it was used with

146 Category 4: Action the meaning ‘worship shown to an object’. The noun gebeorshipe mostly occurred with the meaning ‘drinking party, feast’, i.e. it denoted an event, but it could also mean ‘entertainment’ in a general sense, in which case it was certainly closer to an abstract reading. 3. Summary Table 34 indicates the overall frequency of occurrence of all suffixes attested with nouns denoting actions and the number of new formations among all attested tokens and types in each period. The latter suggests that -UNG was the suffix that contributed most to the creation of new nouns in this category. The occurrence of new nouns denoting actions that resulted from zero-derivation was much smaller, but still higher than that with all remaining suffixes. The number of new types found with all other suffixes was insignificant and reflects their gradual falling into disuse. Table 34. Frequency of OE and early ME Action-noun suffixes and new formations

OE1 OE2 OE3 ME1

-D

-EN

-LAC

-NESS

-UNG

28/12 52/16 16/10 34/12 10/4 8/3 1/1

3/2 0/0 0/0 66/2 56/1 2/2 1/1

2/1 3/2 1/1 3/1 0/0 4/2 3/1

39/21 18/5 4/4 18/11 11/9 0/0 0/0

70/38 77/39 52/29 145/62 80/41 74/44 54/35

-Ø 213/23 166/28 34/12 150/25 27/10 132/16 25/5

As the data suggest, in OE the category Action was predominantly expressed by -UNG and -Ø, but some morphological variation remained due to the occurrence of nouns with two less frequently used suffixes, -D and NESS, both of which became insignificant in ME. -EN and -LAC occurred only sporadically in all subperiods and can therefore be neglected. In early ME, practically only one derivational process remained productive for the formation of new nouns denoting actions, namely suffixation with -UNG (>-ing). Zero-derivation was not unproductive in early ME, but the low number of new types indicates that most of these nouns were formations that had been in use already in OE.

Chapter 9 Category 5: Abstract

1. Introduction Abstract nouns denote entities that cannot be perceived by the sensory organs since they have no physical correlate in the extra-linguistic world. They typically denote purely mental representations, such as emotions (e.g. renysse ‘fierceness, rage’), abstract results of an action (drunkennesse ‘drunkenness’), or particular states in life (eowd#m ‘servitude’). Abstract nouns share some properties with action nouns, both from a formal and a semantic perspective. Formally, both types of nouns could often be derived with the same suffix, e.g. with -D or -UNG. Semantically, nouns of the categories Action and Abstract denoted abstractions rather than concrete entities in the extra-linguistic world. This suggests an intrinsic relation between the two classes, as suggested by Zbierska-Sawala (1993: 20). Nouns of the category Action, however, denote processes, events, and/or actions, which all imply a dynamic sense and thus a temporal progression, whereas Abstract-nouns refer to states and thus necessarily lack a sense of dynamics. This lack is related to the type of base that these nouns are derived from: Abstract-nouns are usually derived from adjectives, the past participle of verbs, or from nouns denoting persons or objects. Since for these word classes the concept of time or progression in time is irrelevant, abstract nouns tend to denote a static concept.41 Abstract nouns denote a property or refer to a state without explicit verbalization of the referent: rænysse ‘fury, anger’, for instance, is a psychological state which refers to an animate being that remains unexpressed, and frondscipe ‘friendship’ denotes the quality of the relation between human beings and thus refers to a dyad or larger group of people that remains unexpressed in the derivative. Martin (1996: 45) refers to this phenomenon as “incomplétude référentielle”: abstract nouns are referentially dependent, but at the same time they are used in an absolute way (“application dans l’emploi absolu”), i.e. as autonomous units. In other words, nouns are abstract because they imply the presence of a concrete, referential entity that embodies the abstract concept, but this entity remains unexpressed. The inventory of suffixes used for the indication of the category Abstract in OE includes the following suffixes:

148 Category 5: Abstract -D, -DOM, -EN, -HAD, - LAC, -NESS, -RÆDEN, -SCIPE, -UNG, -Ø.

With ten exponents the category was, next to that of Person, the one with the richest morphological inventory. However, as with all categories, the frequency of use of these suffixes for new formations as well as their overall occurrence differed significantly. The status of -NESS and -SCIPE as productive suffixes deriving abstract nouns is rather undisputed in the literature. Other morphological units, above all -DOM, -HAD, -LAC, and -RÆDEN, are not always considered as suffixes since all of them occurred both as free elements and as a determinatum in compounds in OE. The disagreement concerning the morphological classification of the four elements, particularly that of -d#m and -hd, results from different criteria that are used to define a morphological unit as a suffix. For some authors, the existence of a free form next to the suffixlike form excludes an analysis of the unit as a suffix. Thus, Koziol ([1937] 1972: §458) argues that -hd could be analyzed as a suffix only after the independent form had died out, which was around 1400 (according to Dietz 2007: 99). Phonological criteria could theoretically be considered as well in those cases where a morphological unit may be interpreted as the determinatum in compounds or as a suffix. Uninflected derivatives with monosyllabic suffixoids, for instance, exhibited a shortening of the long vowel whereas the inflected ones had a long vowel, e.g. hlig-dom : hlig-d#m-es. If the vowel was realized as a long vowel in all contexts, it would be an indicator for the status of d#m (or hd) as a full noun that is used as determinatum in compounds. However, if these morphemes changed their phonological form, depending on the presence or absence of an inflectional marker, they should be analyzed as suffixes. Unfortunately, until the middle of the fourteenth century the spelling practices did not indicate a formal difference between the shortened vowel in inflected and uninflected wordforms, which makes it difficult to determine the status of -DOM and -HAD.42 Semantic criteria are much more reliable and useful for the distinction between a suffix and an independent word. Generally, the generation of a suffix from an independent word is the result of an abstraction of the semantic content of the latter, i.e. a loss of semantic specificity, by which an emerging suffix assumes a category-indicating function. Dietz (2007: 103) describes the development as one from an “autosemantic” element, which may occur in isolation and as a base word, towards a “synsemantic” element, which lost the ability to occur as an independent word and to be used as the base for derivational processes. In the latter case, the word-form begins to form a structural pattern in which all word-forms have the same

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 149

categorical meaning. Thus, a lexical morpheme may be analyzed as a “full” suffix when it developed a “word-formation meaning”, i.e. one that is independent of the meaning of the free lexeme and categorical, and when it lost the ability to function as the lexical base for derivational processes. This line of reasoning implies that the co-existence of a lexeme as a free form and as a determinatum in compounds does not exclude an analysis of the morpheme as a suffix if it developed a word-formation (=categorical) meaning. Since both developments, that is, semantic separation from the free lexeme and the development of formal dependency, are gradual and thus extend over a larger period of time, suffixes whose word-formation properties have not fully been developed may be called ‘suffixoids’. However, as Dietz (2007: 158) suggests, suffixoids should not be assigned a special status, but be included into the class of suffixes since the development of a particular word-formation meaning may occur independently from the existence of the free form. Consider, for instance, that the OE noun d#m has survived until the present day (> doom), whereas the bound counterpart became a genuine suffix. In PDE both are different morphemes. Since the OE morphemes -DOM, -HAD, -LAC and -RÆDEN displayed a wordformation meaning when they occurred as determinatum in compound forms, they will be analyzed as suffixes here and thus be included into the empirical analysis.

2. Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 2.1. -D Morphology The suffixes of the family -t/-d/-, which are historically based on the IE stem-formative -t- and its extended forms, were used to derive nouns denoting abstract concepts either from adjectives (earm ‘poor’ – ierm ‘poverty’) or verbs (brec ‘fracture’ from brecan ‘to break’) in OE. Some denominal nouns existed as well, e.g. ferh ‘life’ – fer ‘soul, spirit’, and in one case the base was a preposition (inno ‘the inner part of the body, stomache’ from innan ‘in, into, within’), but these types play a marginal role only. Many of the derivatives exhibited umlaut.

150 Category 5: Abstract Semantics The meaning of the derivatives with -D within the category of Abstractnouns was one of the following three: (1) Result of an action/process: dea ‘death’, ge/oht ‘thought’, gewyhrt ‘work, merit’ (2) State in which a human being lives in/a stage which it passes through: dugu ‘manhood, magnificence, power’, ealda ‘age’, geogu ‘youth’ ierm ‘poverty’, mirig/myrh ‘pleasure, joy’ (3) Quality: streng ‘strength’, heaht/heiht ‘height’, leng ‘length’ Table 35. Frequency of -D -D

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

60 15

142 32

142 20

174 25

V  N [Abstract] A  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: dea 28, drohta, dugu 2, fæh, frym, fulluht 6, fulwiht 7, gedwyld, gesæl, (inge)hyd, ierm 3, mæ, scyld, streng, ge/oht 5 OE2: blæd, brec, dea 29, dugu 2, ealda, fæh 8, fer 2, freo, gebyrd 3, ge/cynd 2, ge/dwyld 8, gehygd 4, gemynd 8, getryw, geogo 5/iugu 3, gesceaft 2, ingehyd 2, gesæl, gife, hyn 3, irm 13, (gewit, rece) least 2, mæ 2, mær 10, mæg, myrh/myrh 11, seara, gesiht 1/gesih 1, streng 2, wroht, earft, ge/oht/geeaht 8 OE3: æbylg, dea 42, gebyrd 6, gecynd, dwyld 2/ge/dwild 7, gemynd 12, geogu 3/iugu 3, gesih/gesiht/gesyh 8, geeaht 9/geoht 3, hæl, inno 4, irm 1/yrm 4, leng, (car-/mete-/sorh-)least 7, mæg 5, mær, myrh 3, streng 16, eowet, wræ ME1: brae, bure, cunde 8, dea 34, earm 4, ful 18, heath 1/heiht 1,  eherh, hreou, lae, leng, murh 5, ræ 2, scrift 29, seighe, sih 2/esiht 1/sihh 4/siht 1, slew, stil, streng/streng 24, tact, trowwe 6/tru 1/treu 2, rift, oht 8, eof, wreae 2/wrae 3/wrae 5

The suffix -D was used for the derivation of nouns of all five conceptual categories distinguished in this study, but it showed the highest frequency in the category of Abstract-nouns (see Table 35). Furthermore, while in all other categories the number of formations with -D underwent a decline in ME1 and the suffix tended to be preserved in fossilized word-forms only, no such tendency can be observed for the function of -D as an indicator of

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 151

the category Abstract: at least the token frequency remained rather stable over all subperiods. However, in spite of the considerable number of different types attested in all subperiods the token frequencies are much higher than those of the types, which requires some caution with respect to judgments on the actual use of this suffix for new formations. The suffix occurred with a variety of nouns that exhibited a high frequency of use, due to the fact that they denoted concepts that are central in human existence, such as streng ‘strength’, iugu ‘youth’, dea ‘death’ or ge/oht ‘thought’. The presence of -D in such important, highly frequent words explains why it is still present in PDE, although it ceased to be used for new formations during the later part of the ME period (see Dalton-Puffer 1996: 87). However, next to the occurrence of -D with nouns that exhibited a high rate of repetition, the suffix was also found with a considerable number of low frequency words and with new formations that did not show umlaut. It can therefore not be excluded that the suffix was used at least moderately for the creation of new nouns in OE and early ME and thus contributed to the extension of the lexicon with respect to nouns of the category Abstract in all subperiods. 2.2. -DOM In OE, d#m was still used as a noun with a broad range of meanings. Some of its meanings were ‘doom, judgement, judicial sentence, decree, ordinance, law, command, might, power, dignity, will, choice’ (Bosworth and Toller [1898] 1967: 207). It was certainly the meaning of ‘state, condition’ which was the base for the development of a word-formation meaning and for the derivation of nouns denoting abstract concepts, as it is the most general one and the one which still surfaces in the derivatives with -DOM (e.g. boredom ‘state of being bored’). The differences in frequency between the occurrence of d#m as a noun and that of a bound element is remarkable: Dietz (2007: 104) found 2,000 tokens in the DOE in which d#m occurred as an independent noun, and over 50 different word-forms (types) in which it occurred as the second element in compounds. Some of these compound forms were attested with a high number of tokens, such as w!sd#m, which according to Dietz occurred more than 940 times. Other frequent forms were cristend#m ‘christianity’, ealdord#m ‘power, might’, martyrd#m ‘martyrdom’ and frod#m ‘freedom’, each being attested with a number of tokens ranging from 275 to

152 Category 5: Abstract 130. Thus, the occurrence of -d#m as the second element in compounds was restricted to a small number of highly frequent formations, which makes it difficult to determine the exact status of the element as noun or suffix. Faiß (1978: 187) claims that -d#m was a semi-suffix that developed into a suffix in ME, whereas Sauer (1992: 15, 144) states that -d#m had already become a suffix by the time of ME. Based on semantic criteria, Dorskiy (1960: 128) and Ciszek (2006: 110) state that -d#m must have had the status of a genuine suffix already in late OE, because at that time some of its senses differ from those of the noun d#m. Dietz (2007: 124) suggests that the development of a word-formation function should be related to the word-class of the base: new formations with -DOM based on adjectival bases occurred much earlier than denominal ones. Thus, -DOM started to develop suffix-like functions already around 900 in deadjectival formations (new forms like aldd#m and dysigd#m are attested around 900), but not before 950 in the field of denominal derivation with nouns denoting persons as base words. However, its productivity was certainly restricted since, as Dietz (2007: 105) observed, the 50 word-forms with -dom as second element tended to occur in two particular text types only, namely in ecclesiastical poetry and in prose. Based on an analysis of single word-forms with d#m, Dietz (2007: 125) concludes that the element is very unlikely to have had full suffix status before the beginning of the eleventh century. In view of the obvious difficulties in separating d#m as the determinatum in compounds from the suffix -dom, all occurrences with d#m attached to a base word have been included here. Even if the word-forms with d#m that occurred in OE1 are more likely to be compounds than suffixed nouns, their inclusion does not pollute the data since it is these wordforms that constitute the starting point for the later rise in the use of -DOM for new combinations with different base forms. Formations with -DOM often had parallel forms with -HAD (e.g. owd#m ~ owhd ‘servitude’), -NESS (hligd#m ~ hligness ‘holiness, sanctitiy’) and -SCIPE (frod#m ~ froscipe ‘tax exemption’). Some of these pairs seem to have been nearly synonymous (as those above), whereas in other cases one may recognize a clear difference in meaning (e.g. w#hd#m ‘misjudgment’ : w#hness ‘perfidy’) (see Dietz 2007: 116). Morphology The suffix was attached to nominal (e.g. matyrd#m) and adjectival bases (e.g. frod#m) and did not induce a phonological change of the base. The

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 153

word-class of the base is often difficult to determine. The noun owd#m, for instance, may be based on the noun ow ‘servant’ or on the adjective ow ‘unfree, subordinated’, both from a semantic and formal perspective: owd#m means ‘servitude’, but also ‘(divine) service’, and for both the meaning of the noun as well as that of the adjective may be plausibly related to the meaning of the derivative.43 The type of nouns attested in early ME suggests that -DOM became established for combinations with nominal bases denoting persons. The word-formation patterns found in OE, which are basically deadjectival formations (frod#m) and those based on abstract nouns (sw!cd#m), seem to have become less productive. Semantics Nouns with -DOM that belong to the category Abstract may be classified semantically into five groups. (1) Group of individuals, e.g. cristendom Nouns of this semantic group were similar to those with -SCIPE, which could also denote a group of individuals. The nouns did not refer to single persons that were members of a given social group, but to a collective of people as a whole, thus denoting an abstract concept. (2) The abstract result of an action, e.g. lard#m ‘teaching’, sw!cd#m ‘deceit, treachery’. (3) A state characterized by the behavior of the individuals denoted by the base noun: martyrd#m, hæend#m ‘heathendom’, h#rd#m ‘whoredom’, probably also owd#m ‘service, servitude, slavery’ (although ow may also be analyzed as adjective). (4) A state defined by a particular property or quality, e.g. frod#m, w!sd#m. (5) Dignity or office, e.g. eorld#m ‘office, rank of an earl’, biscopd#m ‘office, rank of a bishop’.

Some derivatives with -DOM adopted a concrete meaning and came to denote a particular object or location, such as hligd#m, which referred to a collective of holy things, or cyned#m and biscopd#m, which often referred to a location that was under the rule of a king or a bishop rather than to the office or rank of a king or a bishop, or any abstract domain of political influence. Such nouns changed their categorical meaning from Abstract to

154 Category 5: Abstract Object or Location. However, -DOM exhibited a high degree of systematicity only within the category Abstract. Table 36. Frequency of -DOM -DOM

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

57 10

30 6

34 6

55 11

N [Person]  N [Abstract] A  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: bisc(op)dom 17, cristendom 16, cynedom, ealddom 1/ealdordom 1, freodom 2, matirdom 3, papdom, swicdom 2, eowdom 10, wisdom 3 OE2: cristendom 10, freodom, martyrdom 2, swicdom 2, eowdom, wisdom 14 OE3: cristendom 6, ealdordom 3, lareowdom 2, martirdom 6, wisdom 11, eowdom 6 ME1: cristendom 7, freodom 2, halidom/haligdom 3, hæendom/hæendom 3, horedom 2, kinedom, laferdom 2, richedom 2, swicedom 1/suicdom 1, eowdom 18, wisdom 13

The overall type frequency of the suffix was rather low and some types reoccurred frequently, which is reflected in the discrepancy between type and token figures (Table 36). Generally, -DOM was one of the few suffixes whose frequency of occurrence remained stable over all periods. Since the morpheme had not yet reached the full status of a suffix in the earliest periods of the English language, the low type frequencies may be explained with the fact that -dom was only in the beginning of a grammaticalization process. The combination with a larger variety of base words is a continuous process that develops over time, and the nouns attested for OE are only the first combinations of this suffix or suffix-like element with nominal and adjectival bases. -DOM therefore had a larger growth potential than other, already established and historically older suffixes. 2.3. -EN Morphology The suffix was attached to the stem of strong and weak verbs. Some of the derivatives exhibited umlaut.

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 155

Semantics Nouns with -EN denoted abstract concepts in the strictest sense: the denoted entity is a mental construct related to a particular action. Thus, wacen ‘wakefulness, sleeplessness’ is related to wacian ‘to wake, remain awake’, byrden ‘burden, load’ is related to beran ‘to bear’, swefen ‘dream’ is related to swefan ‘to sleep’, and ge/segen ‘a tale’ is related to ge/secgan ‘to tell, narrate’. The suffix is attested with five different types within the category Abstract, which reoccur in all periods with varying frequencies. It is therefore unlikely that the suffix was used to create new lexical items in this category. Rather, the nouns seem to be leftovers of a supposedly productive use of -EN in pre-OE times, which means that the suffix did not contribute to the extension of the lexicon in OE. Table 37. Frequency of -EN -EN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

9 3

11 4

28 2

2 1

V  N [Abstract]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

mægen 2, swefen 2, ge/sægen 5 byren 4, gesegen, mægen 5, wacen swefen 26, byren 2 buren 2

2.4. -HAD In OE hd was still a noun with a wide range of meanings, such as ‘degree, state, rank, order, character, nature, kind, state’. The morphological status of -HAD was identical to that of -DOM in the sense that both underwent a gradual shift from free to bound elements during the OE period. Therefore, the formations listed for OE here might also be analyzed as compounds.44 In some cases formations with -HAD had parallel forms with -DOM, which often seem to have been synonymous: the difference in meaning between cyned#m ~ cynehd ‘dominion, power of a king’, owd#m ~ owhd

156 Category 5: Abstract ‘servitude’, or campd#m ~ camphd ‘warfare’ is difficult to determine, whereas a clear difference in meaning may be claimed for the pair woruldd#m : woruldhd, the first referring to a secular judgment, i.e. the judgment of a secular court, the second to secular power in general (see Dietz 2007: 115). The elimination of one of the concurring forms, either that with -DOM or that with -HAD, did not follow a systematic pattern: in some cases, formations with -DOM replaced parallel forms with -HAD (cyned#m, bisceopd#m), in other cases forms with -HAD ousted those with -DOM (camphd). Morphology Nouns with -HAD were all denominal formations. The nominal bases all denoted a human being, i.e. they all belonged to the conceptual category of Person. Derivations from adjectives, which can be found in ME at the latest (e.g. falshde ‘falsehood’), were not attested in the corpus. Dietz (2007: 128) lists three deadjectival formations that occurred already in OE (hahhd ‘religious order’, sacerl!c-hd ‘judicial state of a priest’, and wæpnedhd ‘male sex’), suggesting that these document a limited extension of the word-formation pattern to adjectives. Other authors either exclude the existence of this pattern (Krahe and Meid 1967: §159), or do mention it at all (Kastovsky 1992a: 386). Semantics The derivatives denoted the social position, rank, or state of a person denoted by the base, e.g. mæghd ‘maidenhood, virginity, state of being a virgin’, prosthd ‘priesthood, state/rank of being a priest’. Some nouns denoted a period in life characterized by the type of person denoted by the base noun: cnihthd ‘a period between childhood and manhood’, cildhd ‘the period of infancy’, geoguhd ‘age of a young person’. These periods are stages in life which the individuals denoted by the base noun go through and which are therefore characterized by a certain behavior, norms and values. A useful paraphrase is therefore ‘state of being N’. A third type of nouns, which was not attested in the corpus but found in the Toronto Dictionary of Old English and discussed in Dietz (2007: 129), was that of abstract concepts in a general sense, as in glc-hd ‘misery’ or woruld-hd ‘secular way of life’, where the meaning of the base itself was abstract.

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 157 Table 38. Frequency of -HAD -HAD

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

5 4

1 1

7 4

60 4

N [Person]  N [Abstract]

tokens types OE1: OE2: OE3: ME1:

mæghad/mæghad 2, camphad, cnihthad, preosthad cildhad clærchad, knihthad 2, munuchad 2, preosthad 2 wedlachad, widewehad 2, wreccehed, meihad 54/maidenhad 2

The type and token frequencies for -HAD are very low (see Table 38). The high token frequency in ME1 is due to the frequent use of the noun meihad in the early ME treatise Hali Meihad and therefore not indicative for a frequent use of the suffix in early ME. The low frequency of occurrence may be related to the existence of the semantically and functionally equivalent derivational process with -DOM, which was more frequent. The suffix occurred with different types in all subperiods, i.e. -HAD was combined with a variety of different base words. Thus, the low type-frequencies do not indicate a general lack of formative power of the element, but rather a moderate use of the suffix, whose semantic contribution was not much different from that of other suffixes indicating the category Abstract. 2.5. -LAC Lc occurred as a noun with two meanings in OE, (1) ‘play, game, battle’ and (2) ‘gift, offering, sacrifice’. While for Holthausen ([1934] 1974) the two meanings are the result of two independent morphological processes (lc ‘play, game, battle’ as a deverbal noun from lcan ‘to play, fight’, and lc ‘gift, offering, sacrifice’ from l!cian ‘to like’), Dietz (2007: 138) suggests that the second meaning was derived from the first, much older one by means of a shift of the focus from process to result. Thus, a metaphorical use of lc ‘game, play’ in the sense of ‘battle’ (battle being understood as a playful, but deadly contest) led to the adoption of the meaning ‘result/outcome of a battle’, which could be a sacrifice or an offering. Dietz (2007: 139) claims that -lc did not develop a word-formation meaning in OE: the meaning of -lc as a determinatum in compounds corresponded to the original meaning of the free lexeme (‘game, play’) in a

158 Category 5: Abstract noun like hæmedlc ‘sexual intercourse’, and to the meaning ‘battle’ in compounds like heaulc ‘battle’ or feohtlc ‘battle’. The second meaning ‘victim’ or ‘offering’ which, according to the author, derived from the metaphorical use of lc ‘battle’, is reflected in compounds like l#flc ‘an offering made to do honour’ and mæsselc ‘offering made at the mess, host’. The formations can thus hardly be analyzed as derivatives. In OE, formations with nominal determinants predominated, whereas in early ME deadjectival formations became as strong as the denominal ones. The observation is important since the Old Norse (ON) cognate -leikr derived nouns from adjectival bases. Borrowed word-forms with -leikr > -lec and hybrid formations with native base words are more numerous in early ME than formations with exclusively native material (e.g. frolc ‘freedom’, raflc ‘robbery’), i.e. the few forms that were continuations of the OE pattern do not give evidence for the use -lc as a derivational suffix that produced a family of morphologically related words. Thus, most of the formations found in ME followed the ON pattern. In some cases, the nonnative lexical base was preserved (e.g. hagher-leik ‘skillfullness’, ON hagher ‘skillful’), in others the ON base word, usually an adjective, was replaced by a native one when the OE adjective was formally similar and semantically equivalent to the ON one, as in g#d-le(i)c (OE g#d, ON góleikr) (Dietz 2007: 140). The suffixed forms with -LAC may thus either be OE formations (from pre-OE *-laika, see Carr 1939: §358–366) or based on the ON pattern with -leikr, or both, with the denominal formations being based on the OE pattern and the deadjectival ones on ON (Aertsen 1987: 221–223). The Middle English Dictionary gives both options and regards both forms (-lc and -leikr) as variants of the same morpheme. In ME texts from the North and the East (above all the Ormulum and Ancrene Riwle) the suffix occurs as -leik < -le((c, -le(i)c>. Since these texts contain a large number of ON loans, it is more likely that the suffix was taken over from ON. Moreover, most of the nouns with -le(i)c occur only in these texts. Dietz (2007: 140) suggests a transfer, integration and a subsequent productive use of the Old Norse derivational model into English. The ON diphtong (graphically ) converged with ME /i/, which was then reduced to //, by which the phonological difference between the OE and the ON form was leveled out. All these considerations suggest that the few OE forms attested in the corpus of this study and listed in the dictionaries were compounds, and that the contact with ON led to the adoption of -leikr and induced or accelerated the grammaticalization of native -lc into a suffix.

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 159

Morphology -LAC derived nouns predominantly from nominal (bodlc ‘decree, ordiance’) and from adjectival (frolc ‘voluntary offering’) bases without causing any change of the form of the base. Semantics In some cases it is difficult to state in what way the suffixed form differed semantically from the lexical base. Both wed and wedlac mean ‘pledge, security’, mennisc and mennisclac both mean ‘people, men’. A different shade of meaning may be recognized in the pair bod – bodlc, bod meaning ‘command, order, message’ and bodlc ‘decree, ordinance’. Furthermore, the meaning of the derivatives with -LAC was often the same (or apparently the same) as that of derivatives with other, semantically related suffixes, particularly -NESS. Thus, modiglac and modigness both mean ‘pride’, mennisclac and menniscnesse both mean ‘humanity, human nature’. Semantic overlaps existed also with formations with -SCIPE: bodlac means ‘decree, ordinance’, bodscipe means ‘commandment, a message’, i.e. both nouns denoted a similar concept. Since we have no information about the pragmatic function of the different members of such pairs we may only with caution declare these nouns as synonyms or doublets. What one may conclude with certainty is that both -NESS/-SCIPE and -LAC seem to have exhibited a strong formal and semantic overlap, since they could be attached to the same base forms and seem to have derived nouns that denoted the same concept. Such instances suggest that -LAC did not clearly distinguish itself semantically from other suffixes of the category Abstract. Table 39. Frequency of -LAC -LAC

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

3 2

5 3

31 9

N [Object]  N [Abstract]

tokens types

-

OE2: reaflac 2, heaolac OE3: bodlac, reaflac 3, scinlac ME1: brydlac 3, fearlac 2/feierlec 1, meocelac 3/meocle c 1, schendlac, wedlac 16, modi le c, godle c, mennisscle c, reaflac

160 Category 5: Abstract The low figures for OE2 and OE3 in Table 39 indicate that the suffix was rarely used and that the derivatives were not in common use. It can hardly have contributed to the extension of the OE lexicon. The higher frequency of occurrence of the suffix in early ME may be related to influence from ON, either through borrowing of -leikr or through the stimulation of the use of OE -lac as a native equivalent to the ON cognate -leikr. The latter case would be a contact-induced activation of a native element that had otherwise not necessarily become established as a regular indicator of the category Abstract. The number of formations with -LAC increased in early ME, and all of them are new formations, but this increase in use seems to have been a short-term development only: the figures for -LAC in Dalton-Puffer (1996: 80) suggest that the suffix ceased to be used in the periods following the ME1 subperiod since in ME2 (1250–1350) there is only one type attested, and for ME3 (1350–1420) no derivative occurs. Obviously, the suffix never played a decisive role in English word-formation.45 One of the reasons for the low frequency and the early loss of the suffix is certainly the semantic overlap with other suffixes of the category Abstract, above all with -NESS and -SCIPE.

2.6. -NESS For more general information on the origin of the suffix, see 8.2.4. Morphology The suffix was attached to adjectives and participial adjectives, i.e. adjectives that are derived from the past participle of verbs and which are not associated with a dynamic concept any more. It was, however, also attached to strong and weak verbs (e.g. forgifnesss) and to nouns. Deadjectival nouns with -NESS could only be derived from adjectives that occurred in predicative position, e.g. cyninges gesaelignysse: se cyning is gesaelig. In most instances, the lexical base of formations with -NESS was already complex. All derivatives were strong feminine nouns. Since the suffix derived from infinite stems as well as from participles, doublets occurred in abundance in the corpus, e.g. gedrefness/gedrefedness ‘trouble, disturbance’ or forgifness/forgifenness ‘forgiveness’. There is no obvious semantic difference between these derivatives.

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 161

Semantics Nouns with -NESS denoted the quality of a state, such as renysse ‘fierceness, rage’, besmitenes ‘dirtiness’, or hreohness ‘roughness of the weather, storm’. A second meaning was that of the abstract result of an action or process, e.g. forlidennesse ‘shipwreck’, gewitnesse ‘knowledge, witness, testimony’. In some rare cases the derivatives underwent a change from an abstract to a concrete meaning, e.g. burinesse from ‘burying, burial’ to ‘grave’ or d!golness from ‘solitude, privacy’ to ‘hiding-place’. The action underlying these derivatives was reinterpreted as a permanent state that characterized a particular place. Table 40. Frequency of -NESS -NESS

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

265 104

201 86

587 130

208 63

A  N [Abstract] V  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: acennesse, æfestnis 6, aldorlicnesse, æteacness 4, æteownesse, andweardnesse 2, anlicnesse 5, annesse, arednesse 3, araerbesnesse, arfæstnesse 4, arwyrnesse, besmitenesse 4, bewerenisse 13, bilwitnesse 2, blinesse, broorlicnesse, celnis, clænnesse 3, cwealmnysse 2, cwemnis 2, cyness 3, digelnesse, drunkenness/-nys 3, eawfæstnesse, eamodness, fædnis 4, fæstness, feornis, fordemednesse, forgifnesse 2, frece(d)nisse 7, fremsumnesse 2, frigness, forlegenesse 3/forlignesse 1, foreseonesse, foresetnesse, geflæscnesse, gefremednesse, geligernesse, gemænsumnis 2, gemeng(ed)nisse 8, geornfulness 3, gesæligness, gescyldnesse, gesetness 3, gestlinesse 6, getreowleasness, gewitnesse 14, un/gewærness 3, hæennesse, halwendnesse, hatheortedness 2, healdness 2, heanesse, heardsælnesse, hersumness, hreoness, hynnysse, idelnesse 2, ingewitness 3, lefness/-nyss 4, lustfulnisse 5, menniscnysse 4, micelnesse/-nis 5, mildheort(ed)nesse 5, monwærnesse, nahtness, nearonesse, nedearfnes, neownysse, oferflowness, ofrygnesse, ondweardnesse, onfengness, ondetnysse, onlicnesse 7, onbryrdnesse 2, onsægdnesse 2, renesse, un/stilnesse/stillnesse 3, scondlicnesse, scynisse, sibsumness, sofæstnesse/sofæstnysse 7, smyltnesse 2, swetnesse, tibernesse, unalyfednesse, undereodnysse, ungeleafsumnys, undealicnesse, unforhæfdnisse, un/trymnis/untrumness 13, unwisnesse, wælhreownysse 2, wænesse, wæstmbeorennisse/wæstmbærniss 9, wæelnesse, weornesse, werigness 10, wilsumnesse, wrennesse, yfelnesse 4

162 Category 5: Abstract OE2: æbilignesse, æelborennesse 3, andetness, anlicnesse/-nysse 3, annesse, anrædnes 2, anwilness, arfæstnesse, arleasness/-nysse 3, awændednesse, beorhtnesse, bilewitnesse, byternysse, clænnesse, cystignesse 2, deafnysse, digelness 2/digolnesse 1, drunkennysse, dyrstignysse 1/gedyrstignesse 1, eadignesse, earfo(r)nesse 7, ecnysse, endebyrdnysse 2, fægernis 3, fæstnesse, forgægednyss, forlidennesse 2, forrotodnysse, frecednysse 2/frecennisse 3, fremfulnesse, freonis, fromnis, fulnesse, galness 2, gecnerdness, gedreccednysse 3, gedyrstignesse, gehealtsumnyss, gehersumnesse 1/ge/hyrsumness 3, gelicnesse 7, gerecedness, gedrefednesse, genihtsumnes, ge/a/segennis 2/onsægdnesse 2, gesaelignesse 4, gewitnysse, gleawnis, godnysse/-nesse 4, godcundness, ge/setnysse/-nesse 11, geswencnisse 4, hefignesse, heanisse 3, hrenis, linysse 3, mægenrymnysse, menniscnysse, micelnysse/-nesse 10, mildheort(ed)nesse 10, missenlicnesse, modigness/-nyss 2, nearonisse, nytennysse, onfundennesse, ongietenisse, reownesse 3, rædnesse, un/rihtwisnesse/-nys 12, snotornesse/nysse 3, smiltnesse 1/smyltnysse 2, softnysse 2, sofæstnysse, stillness 2, snelnesse, staolfæstnesse 4, stuntnysse 3, swiftnesse, sarnesse 4, unmætnisse, unseinysse 2, untrymnesse/untrumness 2, wælreownesse/nysse 2, welwillendnesse, wynsumnis, yfelnesse 3, wyrnyss 2 OE3: acennednys 3, æbylinesse, alysednyss/-ness 5, andetnesse/-nysse 6, angness 3, anmodness/-nyss 2, angsumness 16, an/licnesse 4, anrædnesse, anweardnesse, arleasnesse 2, arwurnesse/arwyrnesse 2, awestness 2, aworpenness, beorhtnysse/-ness 2, blindnesse 4, bliness/blinysse 2, bradnesse, carfulnesse 5, clænnesse 22, cneornesse, cundnesse 4/ godcundnesse 3, ge/cynesse 6/cynesse 5, digelnesse 1/digolnesse 4, dealicnesse, deopnesse 7, drignesse/drygnesse 2, druncenesse 2, dræfednesse 1/ge/drefedness 4, durstinesse 3, eadignesse, eadmodnesse/-nysse 6, earfonesse, eawfæstnysse, ecnysse/-nesse 32, efnesse 4, endebyrdnesse 2, erfwerdnesse 8, estfulnesse 2, fægernesse 3, festness, fætness/featness 2, forbrytness, forgif(en)ness/-nysse 4, forhæfdnesse 1/forhæfnesse 2, forlætnis, forgægednysse 2, forwerednesse, frecedness 8/frecnys 1, gefremedess 3/ gefremnis 1/fulfremmedniss 5, fulnesse, fyrwetnys 2, galnesse 3, gecirrednesse, gecwemednesse 1/gecwemnisse 2, gefylledness, gelicnesse 2/ licnesse 1, gelustfulnes, genihtsumnesse 12, gereccednysse, gewærnesse, gifernesse 2, glædnesse 3, ungesælinesse, gescyldnesse 2, gesetnesse/-nysse 3, geswencednyss/-ness 4, godnesse 4, grymness, haliness 3, hatheortnesse, heahnesse 9, hersumnesse, hreohness 3, hreness, gehyrness 1/hyrness 1, idelnesse 8, langnesse, leaffulnesse, an/licnesse 5, linysse, manifealdnesse 2, medemnysse, menniscnesse 3, mildheort(ed)nysse/-ness 23, mistlicnesse, mycelnesse 2/micelnesse 2, nytness, ofermodinesse 4, ofslegenesse, onbryrdness 2, onlyhtnes, orsorgness/-nyss 10, renysse 3/rænesse 1, un/rihtwisnesse 82, un/rotness/-nysse 12, sarinesse, a/on/sæg(e)dnesse 8, scortnesse, gescyndnesse 3, scyldignesse 2/gescyldnesse 2, seocnysse/nesse 5, slidorness, smyltnesse 4, snoternesse, so-/sofæstnesse 25, stetiness, stinysse/-ness 2, strangnesse, strecnesse 2, stuntnesse, swetnesse 3,

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 163 tiderness, torhtness, un/trymness/trumness 36, earflicnesnes, olemodnesse, uneanesse/un(h)eanysse 6, ungehealdsumnesse, unscæignesse, upahafennesse, wælhreownysse, wiercwedelnesse, wyerwyrdnysse, wodnyss 3, wynsumnes 3/wynsymness 1, wyrgednesse, yfelnysse/-nesse 5, gewitnys 1/witnesse 1 ME1: akennesse, alesendnesse 1/alesnesse 1, asolkenesse 2, annesse, anlicnesse 6, birewnesse, un/buhsumnesse 2, cleannesse 1/un/clænnesse 4, depnesse, deruennesse, di+elnesse, drunkennesse 6, drædnesse, eadinesse 5, eadmodnesse 17/edmodnesse 3, earuenesse, ecnesse 2, evelnesse, forgifnesse 1/ for+evenesse 1/forgivennesse 5, frieurenesse, galnesse 6, givernesse, gluternesse 2, godnesse 5, godcundnesse 8, hehnesse, halinesse 3/holinesse 1, hardnesse 4, haennesse, unhersumnesse 7, hevinesse 2, iborennesse 3, idelnesse 3, anlicnesse 6/ilicnesse 2, lahfulnesse, lewnesse, lustfulnesse, manniscnesse 2/mannisnesse 1/menniscnesse 3, meocness, mildheortnesse 5/heortnesse 3, modinesse 5/modignesse 2/ofermodinesse 1, nielnesse, ortrewnesse, reunesse 2, reowfulnesse, reowsumnesse, rihtwisnesse 16, ristnesse, sarinesse 8, scadwisnesse 3, sibsumnesse, sikernesse 2, softnesse, stohwennesse, swettnesse, swotnesse, un/olemodnesse 6, rinesse, iesternesse 3, witnesse 2/gewitnesse 2, wihealdnesse 2, wlongnesse, evelnesse 1/yvelnesse 1

The suffix -NESS was not only the most frequently occurring suffix of the category Abstract, but the most frequently used noun suffix of all during the OE and early ME period: it occurred with the highest number of tokens and the derivatives display the greatest variety of types. The suffix contributed most to the extension of the English lexicon during the periods under investigation and it can be regarded as the default suffix used for the formation of nouns denoting an abstract concept. The large number of types also suggests a great need for nouns denoting abstract concepts in general on the side of the language users in all periods, which was obviously satisfied best by -NESS. None of the core suffixes of the other four conceptual categories derived a comparatively high number of nouns. The number of types and tokens fluctuated between OE2 and ME1, but these inconsistencies do not diminish the importance of the suffix as the one that produced the highest number of nouns in all periods. The decrease in ME1, where -NESS exhibits the lowest type frequency, might be related to the general decline in the use of nominal suffixes that can be observed during the periods investigated, which affected the growth rate of new lexemes in all domains of the language. With respect to the development of this suffix into PDE one should note that the suffix has obviously not undergone a significant loss in productiv-

164 Category 5: Abstract ity until the present day since it is still among the most frequently suffixes of English in general (cf. Koziol [1937] 1972: 162, and Hay 2003, who lists -ness among the most productive suffixes in PDE). 2.7. -RÆDEN Ræden occurred as an independent noun as well as in various combinations with other nouns in which the element developed a word-formation meaning. The general meaning of the noun was ‘condition’ and thus similar to that of scipe and d#m. Other, less general but still highly abstract meanings of the noun ræden were ‘estimation, reckoning, rule, direction’. The entry for -RÆDEN in Bosworth and Toller ([1898] 1967: 783) suggests a functional overlap with other suffixes or suffixoids: “the word occurs as the second part of many nouns, when its force is much the same as that of the suffixes -ship, -hood, -red denoting a state, condition.” Examples listed are br#or-, frond-, gafol-, h%s- and woroldræden. The status of -RÆDEN therefore seems to be as difficult to define as that of -ÆRN, -DOM, -SCIPE and -HAD in the sense that all of them occurred both in free form and in suffix-position, i.e. in combination with another noun. Thiele (1902: §36) and Koziol ([1937] 1972: §479) consider the word-forms with ræden as derivatives and thus assign it a suffix status, and also Kastovsky (1992a) includes -ræden into his analysis of OE suffixes. Dietz (2007: 142), on the other hand, regards most of the nouns with -RÆDEN as compounds since ræden also occurred as a prefixed noun (samræden ‘harmonous living together, union’, sam- ‘together’, and unræden ‘an ill-advised action’) and thus served as the base for derivational processes. A suffix, however, may never occur as the base for derivational processes. However, the use of ræden as independent noun was restricted to some few occurrences only: the large majority of the 800 matches for ræden in the Toronto DOE are compounds in which it occurs as determinatum. Next to its occurrence with nouns from the judicial sphere (e.g. burhræden ‘civil right’, folcræden ‘a nation’s law’), ræden is also found as the second element in a number of nouns that refer to a type of social relation between individuals (e.g. fondræden ‘enmity’, frondræden ‘friendship’, br#orræden ‘brotherhood’, gefrræden ‘society’). Dietz (2007: 143, 146) suggests that it is only in the latter group that ræden developed the function of a suffix, since it induced a regular semantic change from concrete to abstract. Furthermore, it produced a much higher number of (frequently used) derivatives in this group than with nouns denoting judicial concepts

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 165

or laws (see below). The beginnings of a productive use of -RÆDEN as a suffix can be observed around 1000, even though the extent to which it was used for the creation of new nouns was rather low. Morphology The suffix was attached to nominal bases and derived feminine nouns. Semantics A large group of nouns with this suffix denoted a judicial concept and thus belonged to the official register of the language, e.g. gewritræden ‘written contract’, mannræden ‘serivce, dues paid by the tenant to the owner’, or weoroldræden ‘a law of general validity’. A second group of nouns denoted abstract concepts referring to human relations. The derivatives were formed from nominal bases denoting persons, e.g. br#orræden ‘fraternity’, fondræden ‘enmity’, hordræden ‘guardianship’. A third group denoted an abstract concept in a general sense, e.g. the abstraction of a concrete action or a psychological concept: bebodræden ‘order’, witeræden ‘punishment’, lufræden ‘love’. The semantic contribution of -RÆDEN to nominal bases was often very similar to that of -SCIPE in the sense that it added the meaning ‘condition of being N’ (e.g. broorræden – broorscipe ‘brotherhood’, frondræden – freondscipe ‘friendship’), although fine semantic differences may also be found, e.g. mannræden ‘the condition of being another’s man’ vs. mannscipe ‘humanity, civility’. Here, the difference in meaning is based on the two senses of the noun mann (‘man’ and ‘human being’). Formations with -SCIPE were much more numerous than those with -RÆDEN. In many cases, the difference in meaning between the simple base and the derivative with -RÆDEN is difficult to recognize (e.g. wite ‘punishment’ – witeraeden ‘punishment’, camp(e) ‘war’ – campræden ‘war’). As in the case of -LAC, one may assume that both the lack of a clear semantic difference between the derivatives of -RÆDEN and those of -SCIPE and the lack of a clear semantic contribution of the suffix to the base noun in general were responsible for the rather low frequency of use of this suffix and probably also for its eventual loss. The frequency of occurrence of -RÆDEN was rather low in OE (see Table 41), which suggests that the suffix did not contribute to the formation of

166 Category 5: Abstract new nouns in a significant way. In early ME, no derivative was attested, i.e. the few nouns with -RÆDEN that were in use in OE may have been replaced by other, simple or complex nouns. Both the fact that no fossilized wordform is attested for ME1 and the observation that nouns with -RÆDEN often exhibited semantic overlaps with derivatives that were formed with other suffixes suggest that some nominal pairs must have come to be regarded as doublets. This tendency may have motivated the elimination of the forms with the less frequently used suffix -RÆDEN. According to Dietz (2007: 146), the suffix occurred in a handful of new formations in ME (e.g. felaurede ‘comradeship’, htrede ‘hatred’), but its productivity was moderate and came to an end in the thirteenth century. Table 41. Frequency of -RÆDEN -RÆDEN

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

1 1

4 4

2 2

-

N [Person]  N [Abstract] N [Object]  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: gecwedræden OE2: freondræden, heordræden, mannræden, weoroldræden OE3: heordreden, sibreden

2.8. -SCIPE In OE, scipe was originally a noun meaning ‘condition, state, office, dignity’ and it is also listed as such in the dictionaries of OE (DOE, Bosworth and Toller [1898] 1967: 834). However, in contrast to -DOM and -HAD, which also occurred in free form in OE, all formations with -SCIPE were suffixed words and not compounds since the formations reflect a systematic word-formation pattern by which concrete nouns and, to a much smaller extent adjectives, were converted into abstract nouns. Morphology The suffix was attached predominantly to nouns in OE, although deadjectival formations occurred as well (e.g. hwætscipe ‘quickness, bravery’ from

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 167

hwæt ‘quick, vigorous, brave’). The latter type increased in early ME (e.g. cleanschipe ‘cleanness’, falsschipe ‘falsity’). Semantics The meanings of the nouns with -SCIPE can be classified into four groups. (1) A collective of individuals, e.g. leodscipe ‘a people, nation’ This was the most frequently occurring type of nouns. In those cases in which the derivative referred to a particular individual, it expressed high social status and dignity (e.g. lordscipe). The nouns thus had an official character and were used not only as denotations, but also as forms of address. When the nouns referred to a group of people they identified the referents by means of the function, role and or rank that these occupied or fulfilled in society. (2) Social relationship holding between individuals, e.g. frondscipe ‘friendship’ The derivatives of this type denoted an interpersonal relationship holding between individuals: frondscipe ‘friendship’ is a relation between two or more individuals characterized by mutual confidence and respect, fondscipe is a relation characterized by mutual rejection and negative attitudes. (3) The quality of an action or a state, e.g. hwætscype ‘quickness, bravery’, sotscipe ‘stupidity’, wærscipe ‘prudence, wisdom’ The state could also be characterized by the values and/or a particular kind of behavior associated with a particular group of people, as in hæenscipe ‘paganism’. (4) The abstract result of an action: e#dscipe ‘what is taught, a rule, a regulation’, fromscipe ‘progress, proceeding’.

The frequency of occurrence of the suffix remained stable over the three subperiods of OE and increased in early ME, which correlates with the grammaticalization process from a noun to a suffix, since this change is usually accompanied by an extension in applicability. The difference between token and type frequency was rather low, indicating that the suffix was used in a creative way: the derivatives were not merely repetitions of the same type in all subperiods, but low-frequency items formed from a

168 Category 5: Abstract variety of base-words. Since the suffix was a historically “young” one, it had the potential to become an important element for the extension of the English lexicon with respect to Abstract-nouns in the periods following the early ME one. The rise in type and token frequency may therefore be interpreted as the beginning of a progressive increase in use as a suffix and thus of its establishment as a major indicator of the category Abstract. Table 42. Frequency of -SCIPE -SCIPE

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

28 8

10 7

18 6

33 14

N [Person]  N [Abstract] A  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: feondscipe 2, freondscipe 2, fromscipe, gesinscipe 2, ge/witscipe 2, hæenscype, hwætscype 2, eodscipe 16 OE2: freondscipe, fromscipe 2, gesynscipe, leodscipe, eodscype 2, wurscipe 1/ weorscipe 1, wærscipe OE3: ealdorscipe, freondscype/-scipe 3, feondscipe, hæenscipe 2, sotscipe, wyrscipe 7/wurscipe 1/wurscipe 2 ME1: cleanschipe, falsschipe 2, felauscipe, freondscipe, gleadschipe 1/ gladshipe 1, leafdischipe, meokeschipe 2, miltschipe 3, hehschipe 3, halschipe 2, meadschipe, weoreldshipe, witscipe, worschipe 1/wurschipe 1/wurscipe 3/ un/wur-scipe 7

2.9. -UNG For more detailed information on the origin of this suffix see 8.2.5. Morphology -UNG formed deverbal nouns from strong and weak verbs, usually without causing i-umlaut. Semantics In OE, -UNG was used primarily for the derivation of nouns denoting actions. However, a relatively large number of nouns with this suffix also

Abstract-noun suffixes in OE and early ME: The data 169

denoted an abstract concept, thus lacking the feature of dynamics. These nouns did not highlight the progressiveness of the action denoted by the underlying verbal base, but a state, e.g. beotung ‘a threatening, raging’, langung ‘delay, prolonging’ or tacnung ‘a sign’, or the abstract result of an action, e.g. leasung ‘falseness, lying’. Table 43. Frequency of -UNG -UNG

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

37 18

42 18

85 30

35 16

V  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: besmerung/bismerung 4, bledsung, costung, ealdung, gyfung, geafung 5, ge(e)arnung, gemetgung, gestihtung 2, gewilnung 2, gitsung, hiwung, miltsung 4, neadung, pinung 2, tacnung, willung 7, witegung OE2: bletsung 2, costnung 2, earnung, fremming, gebysnung, ge/tacnung 7, gewilnung 4, gnornung, hatung 3, irsung 2, leasung 9, lihting, mildsung 1/miltsung 2, neadung, oreung, spellung, teoung, wiglung OE3: arwyrung, ascynung, gebicnung 1/bycnung 1, bletsung 6, costung 8, drohtnung, eung, forsceawung, forwandung 2, gebrosnung, gebrosnung, gemyclung 1/ge/miclung 3, geohtung, geteorung, gefreming 9, gitsung, hatung 5, hywung, leasung 6, ge/miltsung 7, neadung 2, onlyhting, sætung, sceamung 2, swicung 4, rowung 2, wissung 3, ge/tacnung 4, ge/wilnung 5, reagung ME1: acoverung 1/coverung 3, drecchung, earning 3, etlung, gitsung 2, hæing, leasung 1/lesing 6, licung 3, myneging, pinung, tiding 3, twinnung, wising, wlechung, wilnung, wuring 4

-UNG was used to derive a variety of nouns denoting an abstract concept, ranking third after -NESS and -D, with type frequencies similar to those of zero-derived nouns. The frequency of occurrence remained stable over all subperiods, with a somewhat higher frequency in OE3. -UNG can be regarded as one of the major suffixes used for the extension of the inventory of nouns of the category Abstract as it occurred with a variety of different nominal bases in all periods.

170 Category 5: Abstract 2.10. -Ø (zero-derivation) Morphology Zero-derived nouns were formed mainly from verbs. Some few deadjectival derivatives occurred in this category as well, e.g. yfel ‘evil’, irre ‘anger, wrath’, and g#d ‘goodness, good thing’. Semantics The nouns of the category Abstract which were derived by means of a zeromorpheme covered a broad range of meanings of which the most frequent one was that of ‘abstract result of an action’: bebod ‘order’, bita ‘bit, piece, fragment’, willa ‘will’, spece ‘speech’, gyfu ‘a gift, grace’. However, some nouns denoted the abstraction of an action, namely those which were derived from a static verb, e.g. wit ‘intellect’ (witan ‘to know’), andgit ‘understanding, knowledge’ (andgitan ‘to understand’), wlite ‘aspect, appearance, shape’ (wlitan ‘to look, gaze’). The deadjectival nouns denoted the quality of a state (e.g. yfel ‘evil’). Table 44. Frequency of -Ø46 -Ø

OE1

OE2

OE3

ME1

60 16

143 22

140 17

158 17

V  N [Abstract] A  N [Abstract]

tokens types

OE1: anginn 2, bebeod 3, bebod 2, deop, eaca, geleaf 14, god, gife/gyfe 4, mæl, (ea)med, overfyll 2, spell 7, wæl, will 10, (were)gild, yfel 9 OE2: andgyt 11/andgit 3, andwlit 2, angin(n) 3, bebod 13, bite, cirr, fyll 1/oferfyll 1, gife 7, gelyf, gescead 6, god 2, hæft, yrre, mynt 8, spell 26, steore 3, spræc 10, will 28, wen, wit 2, wlit 2, yfel 9 OE3: angin 3, andgit 9, bebod 5, biswic, eaca 5, gife 4/gyfe 2, gescead 3, god 8, spece 2/ spæc 7/spræc 4, spell 22, tintreg, will 14, (wyr)mynt 34, wit 4, wæcce 2, wlite 3, yfel 7 ME1: angin 5, bebod, cweme 8, derf, gife 2, god 4, ræd 4/ræ 2, smell, spell 33, speke/speche/speech 5, stinch 3, streon 12, wal, ge/wil(le) 52, wit(t) 16, wlite 3, yfel 5

Summary 171

Zero-derivation was the third strongest process to create nouns denoting abstract concepts after suffixation with -NESS and -D, with a frequency of occurrence similar to that of -UNG. The type and token figures remained stable over the four subperiods and in each period new types of nouns can be found, which suggests a continuous use of this procedure to create new nouns. However, as the data indicate, zero-derivation never ousted or “threatened” the predominance of overt marking, as it was the case with nouns denoting objects.

2.11. Minor Processes -EL The suffix, which occurred with nouns of all conceptual categories, was attested with two nouns denoting abstract concepts, namely regol ‘rule’ (from reccan ‘to narrate, tell, say’) and staol ‘a state, position’ (from standan ‘to stand’). Furthermore, the noun rædels ‘riddle’ occurred in OE2, which is included here as a type for -EL since the consonantal extension is a variant of -EL, belonging to the IE -l- family (Kastovsky 1985: 236). OE1: regol 3, staol OE2: rædels 6 OE3: regol 4

3. Summary There are several interesting observations to be made with respect to the historical development of the category Abstract. The first is that the category is the only one in which the inventory of suffixes inherited from common Germanic was enriched by new suffixes that derived from free lexical items: -d#m (from d#m ‘doom, judgement, law’), -hd (from hd ‘degree, rank, state, condition’), -ræden (from ræden ‘state, condition’) and -scipe (from scipe ‘state, condition, dignity, office’). Their frequency of occurrence as suffixes or suffixoids was still rather low in OE, but a look at the number of new formations indicates that their growth potential was rather high. Furthermore, the difference between tokens and types was rather low, at least in the case of -DOM and -SCIPE, which suggests that the suffixes tended to occur with a variety of base-forms. The suffixes -D,

172 Category 5: Abstract -NESS and -UNG were used with the highest degree of regularity for the creation of new nouns during the OE and ME1 periods, -NESS being a sort of ‘default’ marker for the derivation of deadjectival abstract nouns. A second peculiarity of this category is the morphological richness of its indication: even though not all suffixes were used to the same extent, nouns denoting an abstract concept could be formed with nine different suffixes and a zero-morpheme. However, it should be considered that some suffixes often exhibited close overlaps in meaning, and in many cases it is difficult to state in what way a suffixed noun with e.g. -RÆDEN differed from one with -SCIPE or -HAD. A look at the frequency of new formations among all attested derivatives in Table 45 offers a more precise picture of the extent to which the category was extended by new lexemes. Table 45. Frequency of OE and ME1 Abstract-noun suffixes and new formations -D

-DOM

OE1 60/15 57/10 OE2 142/32 30/6 61/21 0/0 OE3 142/20 34/6 4/4 2/1 ME1 174/25 55/11 61/14 12/5

-EN -HAD 9/3 11/4 5/2 28/2 0/0 2/1 0/0

5/4 1/1 1/1 7/4 3/2 60/4 60/4

-LAC -NESS -RÆD. - SCIPE -UNG 0/0 265/104 1/1 28/8 3/2 201/86 4/4 10/7 3/2 123/60 4/4 4/3 5/3 587/130 2/2 18/6 2/2 121/53 1/1 2/2 31/9 208/63 0/0 33/14 30/8 38/24 0/0 19/11

-Ø

37/18 60/16 42/18 143/22 22/11 52/13 85/30 140/17 30/18 4/3 35/16 158/17 17/9 31/6

With the exception of -EN and -RÆDEN, which can be considered as unproductive, all of the suffixes of the category Abstract occurred with a more or less considerable number of new formations in early ME, i.e. in wordforms that were not found in any of the subperiods of OE. For none of the other conceptual categories a comparable increase in new formations could be attested for ME1, which means that the English lexicon was extended mainly by nouns denoting abstract concepts in early ME. To conclude, four factors indicate that the category Abstract had the highest growth rate of all in early ME: (1) addition of new exponents, (2) relatively few losses of inherited material, (3) three highly frequent ‘core’ suffixes (-D, -NESS, -UNG), which remained in use for the production of new nouns, and (4) a comparatively high overall number of new formations in ME1, which contrasts to the decrease in the number of such formations that was documented for all other categories.

Chapter 10 The development of Old English noun suffixes

1.

Introduction

The data in the preceding chapters have shown that suffixes exhibit different frequency rates for different functional domains, which supports Kastovsky’s (1985: 585) and Bauer’s (2001: 199) claim that productivity measures of derivational morphemes should be based on single semantic subclasses rather than on global frequencies. This chapter takes a more general look at the data presented in the preceding chapters in order to relate them to the question of whether or not a general decline in the use of bound morphemes for the encoding of lexical information can be observed for the OE period and for the transition from OE to early ME. After a brief discussion of the frequency of use of the suffixes for the indication of the five conceptual categories distinguished in this study, a purely formal analysis of all suffixes will be offered in order to gain more insight into the general use of the suffixes over time regardless of semantic criteria. 2.

Statistical analysis

The data presented in this chapter will be based on the type frequency of the nominal suffixes investigated in the present study since only type frequency is indicative of the actual use of the suffixes for new word-forms and their occurrence with a more or less large variety of different lexical bases. In order to explore whether the differences in frequency measured for OE and those for early ME are statistically significant, an adequate analytical test had to be found. The usual procedure to measure the statistical significance of deviations (the so-called standard deviation) is to use one of the tests of the family of chi-square tests. This procedure, however, proved to be impossible for our purpose. The reason is that one cannot determine expected frequencies within the domain of word-formation since an equal distribution of the frequency of occurrence of derivational suffixes over all four subperiods cannot be presupposed. Thus, from a morphological-theoretical perspective it does not make sense to set up a statistical zero hypothesis of the

174 The development of Old English noun suffixes type nderiv suff OE = nderiv suff ME by means of which standard deviations could be calculated. The hypothesis is wrong because it violates three principles: 1. The frequency of suffixes is never equally distributed over different periods in word-formation, not even within the three subperiods of OE as the data have shown. Fluctuation in the use of derivational patterns is a prevalent phenomenon in derivation in general (see Bauer 2001 for e.g. -ment) and thus not necessarily indicative of a general disuse of a pattern. 2. Some patterns exhibit a higher degree of saturation than others, which is not a statistical phenomenon, but one related to the need of speakers to denote an extra-linguistic entity and to the combinability of affixes. A derivational pattern involving an affix that may be attached to a specific type of lexical base only (such as the German adjective suffix -en/-ern, which may be attached to nouns denoting material only, e.g. golden ‘golden’, hölzern ‘made of wood’) reaches a saturation point earlier than one which involves an affix whose combinability is more flexible. The reason is that such semantic restrictions lead to a rapid decline in the use of a suffix after a certain number of the restricted quantity of potential base forms was subjected to the wordformation process (cf. Motsch 2004: 20). 3. Word-formation is highly irregular and idiosyncratic, and the use of suffixes is optional. There is no expected frequency and thus no pre-calculatable value against which a possible deviation could be measured.

In other words, one cannot argue that the figures for early ME should correspond to those found in OE if no significant typological change had occurred, thus implying that all derivatives found in the corpus should be equally distributed over the four subperiods. Since one cannot determine expected frequencies, due to the fact that this would violate the preconditions that allow for an application of the test, one cannot measure deviations from expected frequencies and thus add up the deviation values for all observed frequencies in order to calculate the standard deviation. Thus, any type of calculation from the domain of analytical statistics must be excluded here. However, one may use tests from the domain of descriptive statistics (see Gries 2008). A very basic, but useful way of dealing with the distribution of the data over the four subperiods is the calculation of so-called quantiles. Quantiles result from the calculation of the percentaged contribution of a value to the overall value measured for a particular phenomenon. In our case, the quantile indicates the percentage of the number of nouns with a given suffix found for early ME as opposed to that found for each of the three subperiods of Old English. Since we distinguished four subperiods, the

Overview of the empirical data 175

number of derivatives found in each of them should represent a contribution of 25% to the overall number of derivatives with a particular suffix. The value of 25% results from a distribution of the overall number of nouns found with a given suffix (=100%) over the four periods, each including roughly the same values. A significant change in the use of suffixation patterns could now be claimed if the contribution of the derivatives found with a particular suffix to the overall number of derivatives with this suffix in a particular category is below the 25% mark for early ME and if this holds for the majority of the OE suffixes. Next to the percentage of the overall occurrence of the suffixes we will also provide the percentage of the occurrence with new nouns throughout the OE and ME period. Since new nouns could be detected only for three of the subperiods (“new” nouns in OE1 cannot be determined as it is the earliest period), an equal distribution could be postulated if the new nouns make up roughly 33% in each of the periods. In the following sections the quantile (Qt) for ME1 will be indicated with all tables. 3. Overview of the empirical data 3.1. Person: From nine suffixes to four In OE and early ME suffixed nouns denoting persons occurred with eight different suffixes and as zero-derivatives. Figure 6 illustrates the frequency of all types found with all suffixes that were used in OE to indicate the category Person. The figures suggest that -END and -ERE had the broadest extension over the OE lexicon (see Figure 6). Zero-derivation was particularly strong in OE2 and generally a frequent type as well, but less frequent than overt marking with -END and -ERE. In early ME, only -ERE was left as a rather frequently used suffix, since -END fell out of use. Zero-derivation was only moderately attested with different types in early ME, and all other suffixes were either entirely unattested or occurred in one or two types only. In other words, in early ME a noun denoting a person was mostly likely one derived with -ERE.

176 The development of Old English noun suffixes

Figure 6. Suffixed nouns of the category Person (types)

The quantiles (Table 46) indicate that only two suffixes remained stable with respect to their occurrence in transparent word-forms in early ME, -EL and -LING, but the type figures are very low. For all other suffixes the percentages are below the 25% mark, which means that their general occurrence in ME was lower than in any of the subperiods of OE. Table 46. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-EL

-EN

-END

-ERE

-ING

-LING

-OR

-Ø

8

40

0

0

18

14

25

0

10

Eliminating those types that were attested already in one of the preceding subperiods we get the number of ‘new formations’, i.e. word-forms that occurred for the first time in a particular period, at least in the corpus texts that were included into the present study (Figure 7). Judging from the mere type frequency one may conclude that -ERE occurred with some regularity in new word-forms whereas all other suffixes either ceased to do so or were attested only sporadically with nouns that were not repetitions from OE. The quantiles, which relate the number of types found in early ME to the overall occurrence of types over the four subperiods indicate that three suffixes exhibited a continuation of the frequency of new formations in early ME, namely -EL, -ERE and -LING: the values are close to or slightly above the

Overview of the empirical data 177

33% mark that marks an equal distribution of new formations over the three subperiods (Table 47).

Figure 7. New formations with suffixes of the category Person (types)

The quantile value for -ING (100%) is based on one new transparent formation found in ME1, but since there were no others to be found throughout the entire OE period this formation is not an indicator of its productivity, but the isolated occurrence of this suffix in a fossilized word-form. Zeroderivation remained productive as well, although the overall frequency and the frequency of new types decreased. All other suffixes did not contribute to the extension of the English lexicon in early ME in any significant way, and most of them had ceased to do so already during the OE period. Table 47. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (new types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-EL

-EN

-END

-ERE

-ING

-LING

-OR

-Ø

0

40

0

0

32

100

29

0

12

3.2. Object: Loss of morphological marking Derived nouns denoting objects were attested with five different suffixes and as zero-derivatives in OE. Most of these suffixes were only moderately

178 The development of Old English noun suffixes productive, and the overall number of derivatives found in the corpus (280 tokens/91 types) is much smaller than that of nouns denoting persons (661 tokens/199 types) or abstract concepts (2,913 tokens/741 types) (see below). This has some consequences for the comparability of the charts for different categories and for the interpretation of the bars: while the highest value found for the type frequency of nouns belonging to the category Person is 27 types (-END in OE2), the highest value found for nouns denoting objects is only 13 types (zero in OE3). However, each category should be considered individually, i.e. judgements on the frequency of occurrence of suffixes must be related to the overall occurrence of derivatives within a particular category. The lower frequency of suffixes in the category Object should not automatically be interpreted as an indicator for the lack of formative power of the suffixes, but rather as a constraint on the productivity of the category of Object itself. In this sense, ‘frequency’ is relative, which should be considered when interpreting the figures.

Figure 8. Suffixed nouns of the category Object (types)

In OE, two suffixes exhibited a much higher frequency than the remaining ones, namely -D and -EL, even though -D was little frequent in the first subperiod of OE. The strongest type, however, was phonologically unmarked derivation: nouns formed with a zero-suffix were the most frequent type of derived Object-nouns found in all subperiods, particularly in early ME where all other suffixes tended to occur in fossilized word-forms or with

Overview of the empirical data 179

one or two new nouns only. Nevertheless, the use of -Ø was below the average in early ME, as the quantile (16%) indicates. -DOM, -EN, and -UNG were little frequent, which suggests that they were not used systematically for the derivation of this type of nouns, although the occurrence of -DOM in ME1 was above average (50% of all derivatives were attested in this period). Table 48. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-DOM

-EL

-EN

-UNG

-Ø

6

50

10

17

0

16

The occurrence of new formations with Object-noun suffixes is illustrated in Figure 9. Throughout the OE period, -D, -EL and zero occurred with the highest number of new formations. In early ME, however, hardly any new types are attested with these suffixes.

Figure 9. New formations with suffixes of the category Object (types)

The figures indicate that the number of new nominal derivatives denoting objects tended towards zero in early ME. Most of the types found in the corpus texts are repetitions, even those with the frequently occurring suffix -EL. Three suffixes did not occur with new types in early ME at all. The quantile values are indicative of the absence of new formations as they are

180 The development of Old English noun suffixes either zero or below the critical mark of 33%. The 50% for -DOM are misleading as the value is based on one type only. Table 49. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (new types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-DOM

-EL

-EN

-UNG

-Ø

0

50

13

0

0

18

The decline in the use of suffixes suggests that the writers of the early ME texts that formed the corpus of the present study neither used, nor produced a significant number of nouns denoting objects by means of suffixation, and that the category ceased to be expressed by means of derivational morphemes already during the OE period. In other words, this type of noun tended to be morphologically simple in early ME, which means that the expansion of the lexicon was not based on suffixation in this respect.

3.3. Location: Loss of all suffixes The category Location is, like the category Object, much smaller than that of Person- or Abstract-nouns in terms of the overall number of derivatives (231 tokens/59 types) and that of new types. Therefore, the low frequency of occurrence of the single suffixes must be read in relation to the overall scarcity of derivatives. Suffixed nouns denoting locations occurred with seven different suffixes in OE. The low figures might be considered as little conclusive for an analysis of the development of derived nouns denoting locations. However, as it has already been mentioned, the data must be interpreted in relation to the moderate occurrence of derivatives denoting locations in general. One may conclude that zero-derivation was the most frequent word-formation type used for the formation of nouns denoting locations in OE, but it fell entirely out of use in early ME where no zero-derived noun was attested in the corpus. The six overt markers were found with a moderate number of transparent word-forms only, -EL being slightly more frequent than the others in OE. For early ME, the overall number of derivatives found in the corpus was very low: three suffixes did not occur in formations (-ÆRN, -D, -EN), neither did zero, and the remaining four were attested with one or two types only.

Overview of the empirical data 181

Figure 10. Suffixed nouns of the category Location (types)

In view of these figures, it is little surprising that for all suffixes the quantile is much below the average (=25%) in ME, i.e. the frequency of occurrence of derivatives in early ME was much lower than that in OE. Table 50. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (new types) in per cent

ME1

-ÆRN

-D

-DOM

-EL

-EN

-UNG

-Ø

0

0

15

0

20

13

0

A look at the number of new formations among the overall number of types suggests a more radical picture: already in late OE (OE3) the number of new types found in the corpus is minimal, and in early ME no new types of nouns are attested at all. This suggests that the few nouns which are attested for early ME were all remnants from OE, which means that suffixation ceased to be used for the extension of the lexicon with respect to nouns denoting locations. Since the quantiles indicate a value of zero for all suffixes, due to the absence of new types in early ME, no table will be offered here.

182 The development of Old English noun suffixes

Figure 11. New formations with suffixes of the category Location (types)

3.4. Action: From six suffixes to two Nouns denoting actions occurred with five suffixes and as zero-derivatives. The overall number of derivatives was relatively high, comparable to that of nouns of the category Person. Figure 12 illustrates the predominance of -UNG over all subperiods: the suffix had the strongest presence in the OE and early ME lexicon with respect to nouns denoting actions, and the quantile for ME1 indicates that it continued to be used in early ME without significant reductions. -D underwent a strong reduction in early ME, -NESS exhibted considerable fluctuation throughout the OE period and was entirely unattested with Action-nouns in early ME. The remaining two suffixes, -EN and -LAC, continued to be used on a low level (see type frequency), but they did not contribute to the extension of the category in a significant way. Zero-derivatives exhibited the lowest frequency of all subperiods in ME1. Table 51. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-EN

-LAC

-NESS

-UNG

-Ø

7

33

33

0

24

17

Overview of the empirical data 183

Generally, one may conclude that, except for -UNG, the frequency of occurrence of the suffixes either dropped or remained minimal in this category

Figure 12. Suffixed nouns of the category Action (types)

The core suffix -UNG did not only occur with the highest number of types, but also with the highest number of new formations in all subperiods and thus contributed most to the extension of the English lexicon with respect to Action-nouns in OE and early ME (see Figure 13). Zero-derivation was much weaker, but still significant. The contribution of -D, -EN and -LAC to the expansion of the stock of nouns denoting actions was insignificant (only one new type), and -NESS was not attested with new word-forms in ME1. Generally, only two processes occurred as regular means to create new nouns of the category Action in early ME, namely suffixation with -UNG and zero-derivation. Since both the overall number of derivatives and the number of new types decreased, the derivation of new nouns denoting actions was slightly reduced in early ME. Table 52. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (new types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-EN

-LAC

-NESS

-UNG

-Ø

7

50

50

0

33

19

184 The development of Old English noun suffixes The high quantile values for -EN and -LAC are misleading since they are based on one new type only. They indicate that these suffixes continued to occur with new types, if only on a very low level. In this sense, only -UNG continued to be used with a rather high frequency for the formation of new nouns.

Figure 13. New formations with suffixes of the category Action (types)

3.5. Abstract: From ten suffixes to eight The category Abstract included the highest quantity of suffixed nouns of all five categories: maximum values of 130 or 104 types (-NESS in OE3 and OE1) were not found in any of the other categories. The category could be expressed by means of ten different suffixes, one of which was zero. Of all these suffixes, -NESS occurred with the largest number of nouns. No other suffix of this category and no other suffix used in OE and early ME in general occurred with a similarly high quantity of nouns. A second group of suffixes with rather high frequencies in this category includes -D, -UNG and zero, but the type frequencies are in no way comparable to those exhibited by -NESS. Six of the ten suffixes exhibit a quantile above the 25% mark (see Table 53), which means they did not undergo a reduction in use in early ME, but either remained on the same level as in OE (-D, -HAD, -Ø) or occurred with more nouns in early ME (-DOM, -LAC, -SCIPE).

Overview of the empirical data 185

Figure 14. Suffixed nouns of the category Abstract (types)

In this sense, the category Abstract is the only one in which suffixes can be found that even increased their frequency rate. Two suffixes underwent a reduction in use during the transition from OE to early ME (-NESS and UNG), and two suffixes ceased to play any role for the derivation of new nouns, namely -EN and -RÆDEN. Table 53. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-DOM

-EN

-HAD

27

33

10

31

-LAC -NESS 64

16

-RÆDEN

-SCIPE

-UNG

-Ø

0

40

20

24

A look at the number of new types among the overall number of different nouns attested in the corpus shows a clear predominance of -NESS. It is therefore not only the suffix that occurred most often with nouns of the category Abstract in general, but also the one which was used most often for the creation of new nouns denoting abstract concepts. Four suffixes (-DOM, -HAD, -LAC, and -SCIPE) exhibit a percentage of new formations above average, i.e. they occurred with more new types in early ME than in OE (see Table 54). It should, however, be considered that this increase occurred on a very low level, given the comparatively low type

186 The development of Old English noun suffixes frequency. The number of new formations with -D remained stable in early ME, and only a slight change can be found for zero-derivation.

Figure 15. New formations with suffixes of the category Abstract (types)

A clear decrease in the occurrence with new nouns can be observed with those suffixes that exhibited the highest frequencies of all during the OE periods, namely -NESS and -UNG, although the number of new types is still considerable compared to that with all other suffixes. Table 54. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (new types) in per cent

ME1

-D

-DOM

-EN

-HAD

36

83

0

57

-LAC -NESS 67

18

-RÆDEN

-SCIPE

-UNG

-Ø

0

69

24

27

Thus, it is the historically younger suffixes, i.e. those suffixes which had a lexical equivalent that occurred in free form, which show the strongest growth rate of new types in early ME. Two suffixes (-RÆDEN, -EN) were lost, but the inventory was “refilled” through the grammaticalization of new suffixes, which had the status of suffixoids and progressively increased their frequency rate over the subperiods investigated. Since the core suffixes -NESS and -UNG occurred with a smaller number of nouns (tokens) and new formations, and since the newer suffixes increased their frequency only on a

The overall frequency of nominal derivatives 187

small level and could not compensate for the reductions, the overall number of derivatives underwent a slight decrease in early ME.

3.6. Summary suffixation In four of the five conceptual categories a clear reduction of the inventory of suffixes could be observed. The extent of this reduction ranges from the loss or disuse of half of the inventory (Person) to its complete emptying (Location). We may speak of a systematic weakening of the suffixation system since the data do not indicate a sporadic decrease in the frequency of occurrence of some single suffixes only, but a loss of the formative power of the majority of the OE suffixes, which is characteristic for all categories. Within the category Abstract, the addition of new suffixes and the relative stability of the frequency of use of the OE suffixes over all subperiods supported the retention of synthetic encoding techniques. A further observation that can be made from the data is that mostly those suffixes were unattested or found with a small number of types in early ME which had been little frequent already in OE. An exception is -END, which was highly frequent in OE, but nevertheless lost. Since none of the core suffixes was found with a higher number of new types in early ME and since the overall number of types with the core suffixes remained on the same level, there was no compensation for the loss or the reduction of the formative power of the less frequently used suffixes. Thus, the growth rate of the English lexicon declined or at least underwent a period of stagnation in early ME. The data that document the overall frequency of nominal derivatives (see below) will allow for more detailed conclusions.

4. The overall frequency of nominal derivatives This section documents the development of the overall frequency of suffixed nouns in each of the categories. Assuming that the use of synthetic techniques of encoding categorical information decreased from OE to early ME, this decrease should be reflected not only in a reduction of the number suffixes and a decrease in their formative power, but also in a sharp decline of the overall number of nominal derivatives in general. Table 55 indicates the occurrence of derived nouns in all five conceptual categories and in general (tokens/types) as well as the percentages of tokens

188 The development of Old English noun suffixes relative to the size of the subcorpus of the respective period (the lowest values for each pattern are highlighted). These percentages indicate the proportion of nominal derivatives within the subcorpora. The overall occurrence of suffixed nouns in the corpus in all four subperiods was 1,457 types of nouns with 5,392 tokens. Thus, in a corpus consisting of 200,325 words suffixed nouns made up 2.7% of all words. 361 different types were found in OE1, 401 in OE2, 431 in OE3 and 264 in ME1. The number of different types of derivatives and their tokens was lowest in early ME for all categories. Table 55. Absolute frequency of occurrence of nominal derivatives in the corpus and percentage of tokens relative to the corpus size of the subperiod

OE1 OE2 OE3 ME1

Person

Object

Location

Action

Abstract

all

200/49

88/21

103/15

355/97

522/179

1,268/361

0.4%

0.17%

0.2%

0.7%

1.03%

2.51%

281/78

73/25

63/26

316/90

587/182

1,320/401

0.57%

0.15%

0.13%

0.64%

1.19%

2.67%

113/52

79/32

61/14

416/113

1,048/220

1,717/431

0.23%

0.16%

0.12%

0.83%

2.09%

3.43%

67/20

40/13

4/4

220/67

756/160

1,087/264

0.13%

0.08%

0.008%

0.44%

1.5%

2.16%

The figures fluctuate during the different subperiods of OE, but they clearly indicate that both the absolute token/type frequencies and the percentage of tokens for early ME are below the values for OE with all nominalization patterns except for Abstract, where the lowest percentage of tokens is attested for OE1. In other words, for all categories except for Abstract we find the lowest percentage of transparent nominal derivatives in early ME. The reduction rate differed from one category to another and was highest with Location-nouns. Taking all derivatives together, the overall occurrence of nominal derivatives was lowest in early ME (2.16%). This general reduction in the frequency of occurrence of suffixed nouns indicates a decline in the frequency of use of bound morphemes for different nominalization types and thus a weakening of the OE suffixation system, which surfaced in full extent in early ME. However, the figures do not indicate how many of the

The overall frequency of nominal derivatives 189

tokens/types were only repetitions of older formations in early ME, and which ones were newly formed, thus attesting a continuation of the use of suffixes. The ratio of new vs. older types will be discussed below. In order to facilitate the discussion of the historical development of the stock of suffixed nouns found for each category a graphical representation of the data above will be provided. Figure 16 is based on the number of types, which is considered to be more conclusive than the number of tokens, which includes repetitions of one and the same type.

Figure 16. All suffixed nouns in all conceptual categories (type frequency)

As the figure indicates, the bulk of the suffixed nouns found in the corpus belonged to the category Abstract. Nouns denoting locations formed the second most frequent type, followed by those of the categories Person, Object and Location. In all categories the frequency of different types decreased from OE to early ME: the number of derivatives was lower in early ME than in any of the different subperiods of OE. This state of affairs is reflected in the quantiles, which are below the 25% mark for all categories. Table 56. Quantiles for early ME derivatives (types) in per cent PERSON

ME1

10

OBJECT

LOCATION

ACTION

ABSTRACT

14

7

18

22

190 The development of Old English noun suffixes The heaviest reduction occurred with derivatives of the category Location, where only roughly a fourth of the average number of types found in OE (=18) occurred in ME1. The occurrence of nouns denoting persons was reduced to a third of the average number of derivatives found in OE (60 types), that of suffixed nouns denoting objects to half of the average value in OE, and that of nouns denoting actions was reduced about 1.5 of the average value in OE. The absolute number of nominal types denoting abstract concepts also decreased in early ME compared to the average value for OE, but to a much lower extent than all of the other categories. The figures are interesting also with respect to the development of those categories that include only a small number of suffixed nouns, namely Object and Location. Categories which include only a small overall number of nouns are particularly sensitive to reductions. Thus, the loss or disuse of some few nouns is much more relevant in these categories than in those which include a relatively high number of words since the lack of derivatives may result in the loss of the morphological expression of this category. In other words, if only a small number of nouns that are formed according to a particular pattern is left, these nouns will lack the frequency of occurrence that is necessary for them to serve as models for new formations according to the same pattern. Productivity implies a certain degree of regularity, but the regular application of a particular suffixation process cannot be guaranteed when no or only some single derivatives serve as models for new formations. This is the development we may observe with the categories Object and Location, where no suffix was regularly used for the creation of new nouns from early ME on (and probably also before). The relation between frequency and productivity of word-formation processes has been discussed at length in the works of Baayen (e.g. 1992, 2009), Bauer (1992, 2001) and Plag (1999). Basically, frequently occurring wordformation patterns and thus frequently occurring suffixes have a higher resting activation level than less frequent ones, i.e. the mental activation after the application of a particular rules remains on a rather high level and thus increases the likelihood of applying this process in a new speech situation that allows for the application of this rule. The reduction in the number of derivatives with a particular suffix therefore weakens the activation of a particular rule and thus diminishes the probability of future application. In those categories which have a small number of derivatives, their elimination from the language or their disuse may therefore lead to the loss of the wordformation processes used to derive this type of nouns.

Asymmetries in Old English and early Middle English derivation 191

In order to avoid misinterpretations, it should be pointed out that the overall decrease in the number of derivatives and the decline in the use of suffixes is entirely unrelated to the influx of French loan words. As Burnley (1992: 432) states, the Early Middle English lexicon (ca. 1066–1200) still consisted of 91.5% of words of English origin. This figure dropped to 78.8% only in later ME. Furthermore, the rate of new adoptions from French into English reached a peak as late as the second half of the fourteenth century, i.e. a hundred years after the periods investigated in this study. In this sense, the decline in the number of derivatives cannot be attributed to the preference for French loans over the exploitation of native word-formation strategies (here: suffixation patterns) for the extension of the English lexicon. 5. Asymmetries in Old English and early Middle English derivation The decrease in the formative power of suffixes and thus in the number of derivatives does not necessarily mean that the size of the English lexicon in general underwent a decrease in early ME, since a lexicon does not consist of suffixed nouns only. Other processes of creating new words are also possible: the creation of words without using already existing material (rootcreation), compounding, and prefixation, to name but the most common processes. However, the data show that the rate of suffixation decreased, which coincides with the considerable decrease in the use of prefixes documented by Hiltunen (1983). The following survey illustrates that different types of conceptual information exhibited different degrees of productivity, with some types of nouns being derived more frequently than others, which results in asymmetric frequency rates of nominal derivatives. The following discussion will be based on type frequency as it is the types and not the tokens that are indicative of the use of suffixes for the coinage of different lexemes. In OE1, suffixed nouns of the category Abstract formed the largest group of all nominal derivatives found in the corpus, making up 49% (=179 types) of the overall type of nouns (361 types). In other words, roughly half of all suffixed nouns found in the corpus denoted abstract concepts. The predominance of this type of nouns is illustrated in Figure 17 (the figures are based on the number of types as indicated in Figure 16). The second largest group of nouns in OE1 was formed by nouns of the category Action (27%). 14% of all suffixed nouns denoted persons, and the categories with the fewest

192 The development of Old English noun suffixes number of suffixed nouns relative to all other categories were Object (6%) and Location ((4%). %)

Figure 17 dif 17. The distribution of nominal derivatives over different categories in OE1

The proportion of Abstract-nouns continuously increased during the OE period and in early ME these nouns made up 60% of all suffixed nouns. The percentage of all other types of nouns decreased (see Figure 18). This tendency suggests that in OE and particularly in early ME the English lexicon was extended mostly by nouns denoting abstract concepts, whereas the proportion of nouns of all other categories reduced.

Figure 18. The distribution of nominal derivatives over differ different categories in ME1

In view of these figures, it becomes clear why the progressive decline in the use of English noun suffixes and the elimination of some of these, respectively, appears to be less pronounced at first sight than it actually was and why it has received little attention in the past. Since nouns denoting abstract concepts occurred much more frequently in OE and early ME than those of

Asymmetries in Old English and early Middle English derivation 193

other categories and since the category Abstract was the only one whose inventory of suffixes was largely preserved, the progressive decline in the use of suffixes for the derivation of new nouns that took place in all other categories appears to be little significant from a general, non-categorical perspective. In other words, the predominance of Abstract-nouns disguises the progressive impoverishment of English morphology in all other categories, for which a much smaller quantity of nouns could be found in the corpus texts. The dominance of suffixed Abstract-nouns over all other types of nouns creates the impression that OE and early ME operated with a variety of suffixes to derive new nouns and that there were no significant changes in the use of these suffixes during the transition to early ME since the material was largely retained in this category. The reductions in the use of suffixes that can be documented for all other categories therefore seem to be of lesser importance to the overall system of English derivation and have not called much scholarly attention until the present day: handbooks and articles on English historical morphology usually fall back on fairly global remarks and tend to speak of the loss of “some suffixes” (Baugh and Cable [1951] 2002), of “many Old English patterns (prefixes, suffixes)” (Kastovsky 1985: 221), or do not mention weakening of the suffixation system at all.47 It should be pointed out that the increasing dominance of the category Abstract is unrelated to the adoption of French terminology by the scribes, as the present study investigates native suffixes only and since the influence of French morphology on English derivation was still weak until the end of the ME1 period, i.e. until 1250 (see the figures in Burnley 1992: 432). Thus, the increase of the proportion of abstract nouns is a purely language-internal development. However, the dominance of the category may certainly be related to external influences in the sense that many of the OE and early ME texts are direct translations from Latin texts, which increased especially after the Benedictine Reform. The renewed literary activity resulting from this reform did not only result in a series of borrowings from Latin, but also in the use of native words and word-formation processes to express a new concept or to find equivalents to Latin terms in the native language (e.g. prophet: witega, martyr: r#were, praedicare: læran, evangelium: g#dspell). Old English religious texts were particularly rich in loan translations from Latin, and it is a well-known fact that the scribes exploited many of the various word-formation processes available in OE in finding close equivalents to concepts denoted by Latin terms in their own language (cf. Gneuss 1955, Kastovsky 1992a: 310–313). The expression of concepts from

194 The development of Old English noun suffixes Latin texts in OE, which involved either partial or complete copying of the formal make-up of Latin words, followed three basic strategies, whose use may have supported the predominance of abstract nouns in OE: semantic borrowing, loan translation and loan rendition.48 Many of the words for which translators had to find native equivalents or correspondences were abstract concepts (e.g. misericordia: mild-heort-ed-nes, virginitatem: meihd, benedictio: blts-ung, iustificatio: ge-reht-wis-ung, ignorantia: un-ondcy-ig-nes, locquacitas: fela-sprec-ol-ness, redemption: alesendnesse). Also nouns denoting persons were among loan translations, since these nouns denoted persons that had social functions unknown to the Anglo-Saxon society or which did not entirely match those found there (OE hierde ‘shepherd’ for LAT pastor ‘guardian of the soul’, cempa for LAT gladiator ‘fighter’, aldur for LAT dictator ‘chief, leader’). However, the number of nouns denoting abstract concepts appears to be much higher than that of any other type of nouns, judging from the list of loan-translations, loanrenditions and semantic loans listed in Gneuss (1955) and Kastovsky (1992a). A close translation of the Latin terms into OE required the exploitation of various word-formation rules involving a variety of suffixes, above all Abstract-noun suffixes, which may explain why both the overall frequency of these suffixes and the frequency of derivatives of the category Abstract is much higher than that of suffixes and nouns which belong to other categories. However, the predominance of Abstract formations may also be due to purely language-internal asymmetries in the productivity of different suffixation patterns, as observed by Panagl (1987: 136). The author suggests that action nominalization, i.e. the derivation of nouns denoting actions from dynamic verbs, tends to be more productive in the IE languages than agent nominalization, which in turn is more productive than instrument nominalization.49 The data from the present study of OE and early ME suffixes suggests the following hierarchy for all four subperiods investigated: Abstract > Action > Person > Object > Location.

The reasons for such asymmetries are unclear, but their existence shows that the lexicon is not extended in similar proportions with different types of nouns, at least not with respect to suffixation. Thus, abstract nouns form the large majority of nouns derived by means of suffixation, whereas those denoting objects or locations constitute a minority. This hierarchy corresponds to the order in which derivational patterns were lost or underwent a reduc-

The frequency of noun suffixes from a formal perspective 195

tion in productivity in OE: the categories which occupied the lower end of the hierarchy were those which underwent the most radical reduction in the inventory of suffixes, that is, which ceased to be expressed by means of bound morphemes. The higher one gets towards the upper end of the hierarchy, the more productive and thus more stable derivational patterns proved to be. 6. The frequency of noun suffixes from a formal perspective This section offers a survey of the frequency of occurrence of all noun suffixes regardless their semantic contribution, i.e. one based on a purely formal perspective. The goal is to document the overall development of the suffixes during the OE subperiods and the transition from late OE to early ME in particular. The frequency of occurrence of the suffixes in all categories are shown in Table 57. The upper figures indicate token and type frequencies, the lower ones the percentage of new types among all types found in a given period. Note that "new formation" does not refer to the first occurrence of a word-form in general, but to the first occurrence in the corpus. This way, it is possible to detect if the figures for a particular suffix are based on repetitions of word-forms from preceding periods only, or if a suffix was indeed used for the creation of different word-forms in different periods. It should bee kept in mind that the data from early ME, which are based on roughly 50,000 words, are compared to the preceding periods, i.e. OE1–OE3, which are 150,000 words. Thus, the possibility of finding new lexemes with a particular suffix would have increased if a larger corpus had been used for ME1. However, using a larger corpus for ME1 would have made the overall token/type figures incomparable to each of the other periods, which are based on approx. 50,000 words each. Moreover, the idea is not to document the exact rise or fall in the occurrence of new word-forms, but to explore whether a suffix occurs with a certain percentage of new word-forms within a cohort of 50,000 words, or whether all attested wordforms are merely repetitions from the preceding periods (and here all preceding periods have to be included as reference). In the latter case, even a high token/type number is not indicative of a continued use of a particular suffix for the derivation of new nouns since these are the products of an earlier application of a suffixation process. Also note that all instances with individual suffixes were counted, i.e. also occurrences of suffixes with

196 The development of Old English noun suffixes nouns that constituted minor formations within the different conceptual categories. Table 57. Overall frequency of OE and early ME noun suffixes (token/type) and percentage of new types found among all types

-ÆRN -D

OE1

OE2

0/0

4/4 100% 282/62 67.7% 33/8 12.5% 43/15 66.7% 37/12 41.7% 61/27 88.9% 28/11 72.7% 1/1 100% 27/3 0% 6/4 75% 0/0

143/32

-DOM

62/12

-EL

63/13

-EN

53/12

-END

27/15

-ERE

29/13

-HAD

5/4

-ING

20/3

-LAC

2/1

-LING

3/1

-NESS

305/126

-OR

4/2

-RÆDEN

1/1

-SCIPE

29/9

-UNG

113/59

-Ø

421/63

219/91 70.3% 11/2 50% 4/4 100% 16/9 44.4% 128/61 72.1% 433/91 89%

OE3

ME1

0/0

0/0

202/45 31.1% 41/9 33.3% 33/11 36.4% 49/8 25% 19/13 69.2% 38/18 55.6% 7/4 50% 0/0

214/30 50% 59/15 40% 6/6 50% 3/2 50% 0/0

8/4 50% 11/5 100% 605/141 44% 3/1 0% 2/2 50% 28/8 25% 261/98 62.2% 362/67 31.3%

18/10 90% 60/4 100% 1/1 100% 35/11 81.8% 2/2 100% 208/63 38.1% 0/0 2/1 100% 38/15 73.3% 110/61 72.1% 337/44 36.4%

The frequency of noun suffixes from a formal perspective 197

The use of percentages is probably an inadequate way of documenting whether a suffix continued to be used on the same level over different subperiods since a high percentage is sometimes based on one or two types only. Here, the type frequencies are more indicative. However, it is the best way possible to show if a suffix occurred with new types at all and, if so, to what extent, thus allowing for a more precise interpretation of the type frequency. Before discussing these figures a graphic representation will be provided in order to visualize the general tendency of OE suffixes towards an increase or decrease in frequency or their complete elimination. Figure 19 indicates the type frequency of all noun suffixes in OE and early ME.

Figure 19. The frequency of all noun suffixes for all subperiods (types)

Nouns could be derived by means of 17 different suffixes in Old English (including zero). Although not all of them can be considered “productive” in the sense that they were available for the derivation of larger sets of new nouns, they occurred in word-forms that could be interpreted as transparent (for the criteria used to determine transparency see Ch. 4). The differences in the frequency of occurrence between different suffixes are remarkable: the least frequent suffixes occurred in four or five types over all subperiods only (-ÆRN, -OR), whereas the most frequent ones were attested with an overall frequency of 282 (-UNG) and 410 (-NESS) types. Such differences could be observed already for single categories: usually one or two suffixes

198 The development of Old English noun suffixes functioned as “core markers”, occurring with the large majority of nouns of the respective category, whereas all other suffixes were only moderately or rarely used. The same picture arises from the overall frequency of occurrence of OE and early ME suffixes: the four suffixes with the highest amplitude, namely -D, -NESS, -UNG and -Ø, were attested with 1,134 of the overall 1,457 types (including repetitions of types in different subperiods). In other words, these four suffixes occurred with 78% of all suffixed nouns found in the corpus. The remaining 22% of the derivatives were formed with any of the other 13 other suffixes which the OE system of nominal derivation operated with. This suggests that the morphological variation which one might believe to have existed in OE, due to the existence of a large number of different suffixes, was only apparent since the majority of these suffixes was obviously used for the formation of only a fraction of the derived nouns occurring in OE. Furthermore, all of the four most frequently occurring suffixes tended to be used for the derivation of nouns of the categories Action and Abstract only. Other types of nouns with these suffixes are rare. Thus, an important conclusion one may draw from the overall frequency of noun suffixes is that English nominal derivation was semantically and formally highly specified. Moreover, the suffixes with the highest type frequency also had the highest frequency of tokens, which suggests that the derivatives were frequently used, whereas the derivatives with suffixes that occurred in a small number of types only were rarely used. Finally, only five suffixes exhibit a quantile of 25% and more (-DOM, -HAD, -LAC, -LING, -SCIPE), that is, they occurred with roughly the same number or with more derivatives in early ME than in OE (Table 58). For all other suffixes (which form the majority) the share of nouns attested for early ME as related to the overall number of nouns found in the corpus is lowest in that period, which indicates a general decline in the formative power of English suffixes. Table 58. Quantiles for ME1 in per cent -ÆRN -D -DOM -EL -EN -END -ERE -HAD -ING

0 18% 34% 13% 6% 0 19% 31% 14%

-LAC -LING -NESS -OR -RÆDEN -SCIPE -UNG -Ø

55% 25% 15% 0 13% 37% 20% 17%

The frequency of noun suffixes from a formal perspective 199

Three of the OE suffixes were not attested in any word-form in early ME: -ÆRN, -END, and -OR. The loss of -ÆRN and -OR is less surprising than that of -END, given that their frequency of occurrence had been comparatively low already in OE. -END, however, was the most frequent suffix used for the creation of nouns denoting persons in OE. Its loss is therefore unexpected and probably related to the loss of its function as the marker of the present participle. It should be considered that the mere type frequency is less telling than the number of new formations among these types, i.e. those which were not attested in any of the preceding periods. Figure 20 indicates in what way the suffixes occurred in different new word-forms and thus allows for a more precise documentation of the extent to which noun suffixes were used in all subperiods.

Figure 20. New types attested with all suffixes in all subperiods

The figures indicate a clustering of the suffixes into four different groups. The first one includes suffixes which did not undergo a reduction in the number of different types, i.e. their formative power remained rather stable, namely -ERE and -UNG, which were the core suffixes used for two specific nominalization patterns (Agent and Action nominalization). 90% of all

200 The development of Old English noun suffixes types with -ERE and 72.1% of all types with -UNG found in early ME were not attested in OE. A second group is formed by suffixes which underwent a significant reduction of the number of types and the ratio of new formations among the overall type frequency: -NESS and -Ø. Their occurrence with new nouns was reduced to less than a half of the numbers found for OE: only 38.1% (-NESS) and 36% (-Ø) of all types with these suffixes are not repetitions from earlier periods. The reductions should, however, not be taken as an indicator for the weakening of the formative power of the two suffixes per se since the overall number of new nouns among all types was still comparatively high. In the third group, the ratio of new types found among all attested types was highest in early ME. This group includes the historically “younger” suffixes -HAD (100%), -LAC (81%) and -SCIPE (73%) and, to a certain extent, also -DOM (40%). These suffixes exhibited a continuously growing rate of types and of new formations among the overall number of types. However, the growth occurred on a very low level and was smaller than the reductions with the more frequently used suffixes. A fourth group is formed by suffixes that exhibited a certain percentage of new types, but which occurred with a very low absolute number of types (often only with one or two types): -EL , -EN -ING, -LING and -RÆDEN. With these suffixes, the high percentages of up to 100% (-RÆDEN) are misleading since they are based on a very reduced number of types only (sometimes only one new type was attested) and thus little indicative of a regular use of these suffixes for the extension of the lexicon. A last group is formed by those suffixes which did not occur with new types at all in early ME: -ÆRN, -END, -OR.50 The suffix -D still occurred with a relatively high number of new formations in early ME, at least in relation to the corpus, so that we have to assume that the suffix continued to be used for the creation of new nouns, if only to a limited extent. To conclude, only two suffixes continued to occur with a relatively high number of new formations (-ERE, -UNG), that is, the repetition rate of types found in each period was rather low, which is indicative of a creative use of these suffixes for the coinage of new word-forms. The suffixes from group 2, 4 and 5, which form the majority (ten), either ceased to be used at all, underwent a reduction in use, or occurred with a very small number of new types (one or max. three) only. Those suffixes which exhibited an increase in the number of new types (group three) were used on a comparatively low level, that is, their increased use did not compensate for the reductions observed with most of the other suffixes. In this sense, one can certainly not

Conclusion 201

speak of a general and abrupt decline in the use of suffixes. Rather, a close look at the figures, particularly the development of the overall type frequency, indicates a progressive weakening of the formative power of most suffixes inherited from Common Germanic. 7. Conclusion The classification of suffixes into five conceptual categories has shown that those suffixes which occurred most frequently in all periods (-D, -NESS, -UNG) were primarily used to derive nouns of the categories Abstract and Action, with abstract nouns dominating. In other words, the most frequently used suffixes in English nominal derivation tended to be used to derive two types of nouns only. In other categories the losses and reductions in frequency of suffixes had much more “serious” consequences for the extent to which derivation by means of suffixation was used as a means to form new nouns. For instance, with the loss of -END the category Person lost its most productive exponent, and this loss was not compensated for by an increase in the number of nouns formed with other suffixes of this category. Not a single suffix was preserved for the derivation of nouns denoting locations. Table 59 documents the changes in the size of the inventory of suffixes for the five conceptual categories from OE to ME1, zero-derivation included. The figures indicate the number of those suffixes that occurred in at least two transparent word-forms, i.e. suffixes which did not occur in repetitions (word-forms from older peirods) only. Table 59. The development of the inventory of suffixes Category

OE

ME1

Person Object Location Action Abstract

9 6 7 6 10

5 3 0 5 8

Suffixes occurring with new nouns in ME1 -EL, -ER(E), -ING, - LING, -Ø -DOM, - EL, -Ø -D, -EN, -ING, -LAC, -Ø -D, -DOM, -HAD, -LAC, -NESS, -SCIPE, -UNG, -Ø

Table 59 should be regarded as an idealized representation of the inventory of OE and early ME suffixes: since suffixes tend to loose their productivity only gradually, some of the suffixes included in the figures for each cate-

202 The development of Old English noun suffixes gory are less productive than others, and some may be considered as being almost entirely unproductive in the respective period. Thus, they only indicate the size of the inventory of suffixes which transparent nouns of different categories were attested with in OE and early ME. It should also be considered that suffixes are not lost “overnight”, i.e. one cannot expect a rapid decline in the frequency of occurrence of single suffixes that would be indicative of a typological shift. The loss of derivational suffixes is much more gradual, extending over a larger stretch of time, and often suffixes may be preserved over centuries in transparent word-forms without being productive (e.g. PDE -th in growth or warmth). The preservation of unproductive suffixes in fossilized word-forms leads to the impression that more suffixes are (or were) available for derivational processes than actually used by language users. Also, suffixes may cease to be used in particular functional domains only, whereas they continue to occur with new derivatives in other domains. As the data have shown, -NESS, for instance, ceased to be used for the expression of nouns denoting actions in early ME, but it remained the most frequent suffix with nouns denoting abstract concepts. Likewise, -DOM did not occur with nouns denoting objects in early ME, but increased in frequency with nouns of the category Abstract. The preservation of the formative power of a suffix in one domain may thus disguise the fact that no suffixal expression was retained in another category, or that its morphological expression was reduced over time. Thus, a categorical approach offers a much more fine-grained view on the development of English suffixation than a general, purely formal one. The suffixes in Table 60 ceased to be used in particular conceptual categories in early ME (either eliminated or not attested in new wordforms). Table 60. OE suffixes that ceased to be used for the indication of conceptual categories in early ME Category

Suffixes not used in early ME

Person Object Location Action Abstract

-D, -EN, -END, -OR -D, -EN, -UNG -ÆRN, -D, -DOM, -EL, - EN, -UNG, -Ø -NESS -EN, -RÆDEN

No. of suffixes left in ME1 5 3 0 5 8

The figures indicate that in all categories suffixation processes were lost. Those for ME1 would be even lower if we also excluded all those suffixes

Conclusion 203

that occurred in one or two new word-forms only and which were therefore not regularly used for the formation of new nouns. However, since even a single word-form with a suffix of low frequency may serve as a model for future formations according to the same pattern (see Bauer 1983: 96), one may postulate a loss of the formative power of suffixes only in those cases where either no new word-forms are attested, i.e. where only repetitions of past word-forms are found, or where a suffix was entirely eliminated from the language. Table 61 list all those suffixes that still occurred with one or two new word-forms in ME1, but which displayed only a minimal use, and is supposed to illustrate the problem of determining whether these may be regarded as still available for the derivation of new nouns or not. Table 61. Suffixes occurring with one or two new word-forms in ME1 Category

Suffix

No. of new word forms found in ME1

Person

-EL -ING -LING -DOM -EL -Ø -D -EN -LAC

2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1

Object Action

The category Location does not occur in Table 61 since none of the suffixes was found with new word-forms. The category Abstract is excluded since one suffix, -EN, was not found with new word-forms at all, and one was entirely eliminated (-RÆDEN), whereas all others were frequently used, i.e. none of the suffixes was found with one or two new nouns only. It should be considered that “new formation” means that these nouns were not attested in any of the preceding periods. However, since the corpus is rather restricted, these formations might turn out to be repetitions as well, i.e. they might have occurred in texts of the OE period that were not included into the present study. This is certainly the case for -ING and -EN, which are not listed in Dalton-Puffer’s (1996) empirical study on Middle English suffixation. Since, however, within the general approach taken here these suffixes cannot be excluded they must still be treated as potentially available for new formations in early ME.

204 The development of Old English noun suffixes These examples illustrate how problematic it is to postulate a general trend: the formative power of suffixes was reduced only gradually, and as long as there are still word-forms attested which can be analyzed as transparent from a synchronic OE point of view a suffix cannot be interpreted as unavailable for new formations. What one might state with a high degree of certainty is the following: (1) the losses were strongest in the category Location, where none of the OE suffixes was used for the derivation of new nouns (i.e. the category ceased to be indicated by means of bound morphemes in ME1), (2) the suffixes found with nouns of the category Object in ME1 occurred in one new word-form each, which is rather low and suggests a similar disuse of bound morphemes in this context, and (3) most affixes were preserved in the category Abstract, which suggests that the producers of the written language expanded the lexicon mainly through the derivation of nouns denoting abstract concepts.51 In this sense, the possibilities to create new words were reduced in four of the five categories in early ME, which is a clear trend towards a progressive decline in the use of bound morphemes for the indication of lexical information. The data also indicate that a set of morphological markers indicating a particular category may die out without any immediate successors, that is, without exponents that fill the open place left by the once productive markers. This suggests that the change from productive to unproductive morphological expression was neither a ‘push change’, nor a ‘drag change’ (to use Martinet’s terminology): the suffixes that indicated the categories Location and Object were neither pushed aside by competing processes, nor was the open place left by these suffixes filled with other suffixes that became productive. There were no new suffixes added to the system presented here, i.e. until 1250 and beyond (neglecting the small number of French suffixes that had already made their way into English at that time, but which were not regularly used for the formation of new lexemes in ME1), and the number of derivatives in general was heavily reduced towards the early ME period. Therefore, we may postulate a significant reduction in the use of bound morphemes for the creation of new lexical items in early ME and thus a weakening of the system of English nominal suffixation during the OE and early ME period.

Chapter 11 The typological change of English word-formation

1. Introduction This chapter deals with the transformation of the system of English nominalization from OE to early ME into PDE and discusses the results of the empirical analysis in view of the question raised in the beginning of this study: Are there indicators for a typological change of the encoding of lexical information in the history of English? The question will be answered by combining both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the typological change in word-formation. The quantitative change refers to reductions in the number of suffixes and/or a decrease in the frequency of use of these suffixes, as discussed in the preceding chapter. Qualitative changes refer to structural criteria, above all the morphological status of the lexical base and thus of the input to word-formation processes, and the degree of cohesion between bases and suffixes. The latter aspect includes a discussion of the shift of English morphology from a stem-based towards a word-based type and thus towards a system based on isolated morpheme boundaries. 2. Derivation in Old English The general impression one may get from the data and from the observation that a variety of suffixes was used to derive new lexemes in OE is that derivation appeared to be central to the overall structure of the OE lexicon. OE exhibited large families of morphologically and semantically related words, which means that the lexicon was highly structured. It must, however, be added that much of the morphological relatedness was certainly nontransparent from a synchronic OE perspective, above all in the case of word pairs in which one of the members exhibited alternation of the stem-vowel due to ablaut or umlaut. The conditioning factors for these processes were unproductive in OE, which means that much of the consociated character of the OE lexicon was based on morphological relations that were transparent only from a historical perspective (Kastovsky 1992b, 2006a, 2006b). Otherwise, the existence of word-families in OE suggests that it was characterized by a predominantly consociated lexicon, i.e. one in which words were

206 The typological change of English word-formation linked by transparent morphology. Since only an estimated 3% of the OE lexicon were non-native lexical items until the late eleventh century, derivation must have been a frequently used device to introduce new words into the lexicon whenever new concepts had to be denoted. Evidence for the exploitation of derivation and thus for the use of already existing material to expand the lexicon comes from the observation that the number of morphologically isolated words was rather low. The following two examples illustrate the predominantly consociated character of the OE lexicon. (6)

Morphological relations in the OE lexicon a. wyrc- ‘work’ 

wyrcan ‘to work’ wyrce, gewyrce ‘working’ wyrcend ‘worker, laborer’ wyrcness ‘work, labor, operation’ wyrcung ‘working, doing’ wyrht ‘doing, work’ wyrhta ‘worker, artificer’

b. f%l- ‘foul, dirty’ 

f%l-ø (neu) ‘foulness, impurity’ f%l-ø (fem) ‘a foul place, a highway where criminals are buried’ f%lian ‘to become foul’ f%l!ce ‘foully’ fylnes ‘foulness’ fyl ‘filth, impurity’ fylhde ‘state of being foul, filthy’

As the examples show, different suffixes, zero-derivation, and also grammatical processes like the assignment of different grammatical genders to one and the same lexical base were used to modify a base lexically and thus to create different, semantically related lexical units. This way, lexical bases served as the starting point for the derivation of larger families of morphologically and semantically related words. Even the introduction of Latin loans as a result of the Benedictine Reform (often ecclesiastical terms) neither changed the morphological coherence of the lexicon, nor did it lead to an introduction of non-native derivational patterns, as most of these loans were learned words and belonged to the written language. The transformation of the homogeneous vocabulary did not start before French borrowings flooded the English lexicon in Middle English and surfaced in writing only around the middle of the thirteenth century, i.e. it does not fall

Derivation in Old English 207

into the periods investigated in this study. In other words, any influence from French can be ruled out as a potential factor that induced the typological change of English word-formation and, more specifically, the loss of suffixes and thus the reduction in the use of synthetic techniques to indicate lexical information.52 In spite of the exploitation of derivational processes for the expansion of the lexicon, the OE system itself represented a reduced form of the even more complex system of derivation that can be reconstructed for IE and Common Germanic. This older system became increasingly opaque, above all due to the fusion of stem-formatives and affixes with lexical stems or their loss, and the loss of productivity of many word formation devices. Thus, many words that have to be analyzed as simplexes in OE were originally derivations with IE stem-formatives, i.e. they represent the result of formerly productive word-formation processes in frozen form. This holds, for instance, for some OE nouns with final -m which, from an IE perspective, reflect a derivational rule involving the stem-formative */-m-/. Some rests of this pattern can be found in OE words like h-m ‘home’ (from h!wan ‘family, household’) or bearm ‘bosom’ (from bær-, the past tense stem of bran ‘to bear, carry’) (Lass 1994: 199). However, semantic, morphological and phonological changes (which will be discussed below) obscured the derivational relations, by which an analysis of such mformations as instances of a productive rule involving a formative or suffix -m is not possible in OE. The extent to which derivational morphology had been lost already before the OE period can be reconstructed from Krahe and Meid’s (1967) study of IE word-formation. The authors list 139 nominal and adjectival suffixes for IE/Proto-Germanic that may be found in frozen word forms in Old Germanic. Not even a third of this (reconstructed) inventory was used productively in OE which, according to Kastovsky (1992a), operated with 42 nominal and adjectival suffixes (although it remains unclear which of these suffixes were indeed used for the derivation of new words and which of them occurred in fossilized word-forms only). The present study has shown that in OE the derivation of nouns was based on 16 nominal suffixes plus a zero suffix, which occurred more or less frequently with transparent word-forms in the corpus of OE texts. Thus, OE was characterized by a variety of suffixation process to derive nouns, but it operated with a much more reduced inventory of morphological material than the one which can be reconstructed for earlier periods. As the data in Chapter 10 have shown, the morphological material was reduced

208 The typological change of English word-formation further during the ME period, resulting in a system of nominal derivation which operated with no more than a handful of productive suffixes. 3. The foundation of the PDE system of nominal derivation The inventory of nominal suffixes as we find it in early ME is the foundation of the PDE system of suffixation in the sense that the suffixes that occurred most frequently in OE and early ME (and before) continued to be used on a high level into PDE. Thus, within the category Person -ERE developed into the most frequent marker in early ME, and it is still the most productive indicator of this category in PDE: in fact, virtually any verb may serve as the base for a derivational process with -er (cf. Ryder’s study [1999]). Likewise, -UNG was the most productive suffix with nouns denoting actions in OE. In early ME it merged with the suffixal variant -ing into -ing, which has remained the only productive suffix of native origin within the inventory of the category Action in PDE. Finally, -NESS was the most productive suffix of the category Abstract in OE, and it is still one of the most productive suffixes in PDE. The retention of the status of these suffixes over time is remarkable in so far as English derivational morphology did not only undergo a loss of much of the morphological material (bound morphemes) inherited from Common Germanic, but was also heavily influenced through the adoption of morphological elements from French after these were separated from the loan words with which they entered the English language. This external influence could have been expected to cause some changes in the status of native suffixes in the sense that non-native patterns replaced native ones or increased their frequency at the expense of native ones. None of this occurred. Rather, as Nevalainen (1999) states, French suffixes merely added morphological variation and thus induced a reduplication of suffixation processes that had already been available in the language before, if only to a very reduced extent, rather than introducing new categories and thus the creation of semantically new types of nouns. The contribution of the Romance-based suffixes to the overall system of English noun derivation will be discussed in Chapter 13. Leaving out the adoption of a large number of French suffixes the quantitative development of English nominal derivation can be summarized as presented in Table 62. The figures for OE and ME1 were discussed in Chapter 10 and indicate the number of suffixes which occurred with at least

The foundation of the PDE system of nominal derivation 209

two transparent word-forms, those for late ME derive from Dalton-Puffer’s (1996) empirical analysis of ME suffixes. Suffixes which were not listed there or which occurred in fossilized word-forms only were excluded. ‘Late ME’ refers to the time-span between 1350–1420, which corresponds to the last period studied by Dalton-Puffer (labeled ME3 in her study). The figures suggest that the inventory of nominal suffixes was further reduced during the ME period. Table 62. Suffixes available for the derivation of nouns in OE and ME Category

OE

Person Object Location Action Abstract

9 6 7 6 10

ME 5 3 0 5 8

late ME 2 (3) 0 (1) 0 1 (2) 6 (7)

Suffixes in late ME -er, -ling, (-ø) (-ø) -ing, (-ø) -dom, -hood, -ing, -ness, -ship, -th, (-ø)

Since Dalton-Puffer did not include zero-derivation into her empirical analysis, the figures vary depending on whether one is willing to include a zero-morpheme or not. Since zero was regularly used in OE and ME and since it has continued to be used until the present day, it could be added as a marker to the inventory of the respective categories. It is included in the figures for OE and ME1, except for the category Location, where zero has no theoretical status since all overt marking was eliminated and the category was otherwise not overtly expressed. One could, however, also exclude zero from the analysis if one is willing to interpret instances of a phonologically empty change of the word-class and conceptual category of a lexical base as a syntactic process, at least from the period on when both nouns and verbs were generally uninflected. Within the category Person, -EL and -ING were lost in late ME: -ING does not occur in Dalton-Puffer’s data, and -EL occurs in only a few repetitions of words found in earlier periods in her study or they lack a base form in ME and can therefore not be analyzed as transparent. Thus, the number of suffixes indicating the category Person was reduced to two suffixes (three with zero) at the end of the ME period. The category Object was indicated by two overt suffixes in ME1, -DOM and -EL, which occurred with one type only, and by a zero morpheme. In Dalton-Puffer’s data (1996), none of the nine derivatives with -DOM denotes an object. Some of the six types with -EL in late ME seem to denote

210 The typological change of English word-formation objects: although the nouns are not explicitly listed, the author states that the object and instrument reading predominates with these derivatives (1996: 134). However, most of the nouns either exhibit i-umlaut or they have no related verb which is attested for ME, which suggests that all derivatives with -EL were fossilized word-forms. Therefore, the suffix can be excluded from the inventory of suffixes indicating the category Object, which means that no suffix was available for the indication of the category Object from ME on.53 Only one suffix in Dalton-Puffer’s study occurred with nouns denoting a location, namely -EL , which is found with two nouns that do not exhibit umlaut and for which a base verb is attested: hidels and byrigels (1996: 133–134). Both are, however, formations that occurred already in the corpus of the present study and thus are products of older periods. Since apparently no other nouns were derived with these suffixes within the 170 years that lie between the periods investigated in the present study and the last period investigated by Dalton-Puffer, it seems unlikely that -EL-formations served as models for future formations. The suffix was therefore excluded here. Thus, the inventory of suffixes indicating the category Location has been empty from the early ME period on.54 The inventory of suffixes used for the derivation of Action-nouns was reduced from five to two suffixes in late ME: -EN does not occur in DaltonPuffer’s list, and -D and -LAC do not occur with nouns denoting actions. Thus, only one suffix was preserved in late ME, which was -ing, next to zero marking. The Abstract-noun suffix -LAC disappeared in late ME (Dalton-Puffer 1996: 80), which means that the inventory of the category Abstract was reduced to six suffixes (seven with zero). The figures in Table 62 indicate that the inventory of noun suffixes was continuously reduced throughout the ME period. Out of the 17 different noun suffixes used in OE eight suffixes plus a zero morpheme were left in late ME. One might exclude -th, which was used only sporadically for the derivation of new nouns in ME. PDE operates with seven different noun suffixes inherited from the OE period, i.e. native suffixes: -er, -ling, -ing, -dom, -hood, -ness, -ship, plus zero. This is less than a half of the number of noun suffixes that were attested with transparent word-forms in OE. However, the losses did not render the system of nominal derivation inoperative: the comparatively small inventory of suffixes was used for the derivation of a considerable number of new nouns as the number of types found for early ME and that found by Dalton-Puffer (1996) for the subse-

The loss of categories 211

quent periods shows. It should be considered that half of them were used to derive nouns of the category Abstract exclusively (-dom, -hood, -ness, -ship), i.e. the morphological variety did not correspond to a semantic variety of the derivatives. 4. The loss of categories As discussed in Chapter 2, morphological marking presupposes the existence of categories that are supposed to be marked. This principle is pervasive in inflection: grammatical categories may establish themselves over time, and with them the means of expressing them (e.g. definiteness or the progressive aspect in the history of English), but they may also be lost, which is accompanied by a loss of the means expressing it (e.g. the IE aorist). In other words, the non-existence of any linguistic means to express a particular category, be it on the phonological, morphological or syntactic level, implies the non-existence of this category.55 The category of grammatical gender with nouns, for instance, does not exist in PDE, as it is not expressed in any formal way. This contrasts to OE where adjacent elements (e.g. adjectives, demonstratives) exhibited agreement with the noun. Grammatical gender was an inherent feature of nouns and thus a covert category since it was formally unmarked, due to the loss of the IE stemformatives which had signaled the inflection type of nouns before. However, it surfaced indirectly in the type of inflection that a noun was assigned to, and in agreement patterns in the NP. Since syntheticity and analyticity were defined as structurally different ways of indicating categorical information (lexical and grammatical), the question arises how the concept of “category” may be applied to wordformation and what the loss of morphemes indicating a particular category means in this domain. Following the approach taken in this study, suffixes indicate conceptual categories. These categories are part of mental event schemas, which in turn derive from the interaction of human beings with the extra-linguistic environment. A loss of exponents of a particular category can therefore not be tantamount to a loss of the conceptual category that was indicated by the exponent, since the basic structure of the physical environment and the cognitive perception by human beings acting within this environment does not change in such a fundamental way that the categories cease to exist. The category Location, for instance, became entirely unexpressed by morphological means during the transition from OE to ME.

212 The typological change of English word-formation However, it would be absurd to assume that the cognitive structure of the speakers changed in such a way that the concept Location became irrelevant or non-existent. Consequently, the loss of all morphological means used to indicate this category must be interpreted in a different way. The loss of suffixes in the domain of word-formation means that the function of indicating categorical information was transferred either to other domains of morphological operation (e.g. compounding), or onto the syntactic level (periphrastic constructions).56 In the latter case, the expression of particular types of categorical information would not be part of the word-formation system of a language at all. Borrowing, i.e. the adoption of bound morphemes in language contact situations, has a different status as it is a process of enriching the lexicon based on language-external material. An example for the shift of the indication of categorical information from one domain (morphology) towards another (e.g. syntax) is the expression of the category Location, for which no suffix was preserved in English. The way in which the lexical content of these nouns is expressed in PDE illustrates the main strategies used to indicate the category Location without bound morphemes: a shift of the expression from morphology to syntax (use of periphrases in PDE) or the use of other word-formation strategies, e.g. compounding. Often, more than one of these options is possible in a single case. The replacement of OE nouns denoting locations by periphrases and/or compounds: flod smygil byrgels hydels ræste fæsten gangern healærn mæelærn

‘place where vessels float’ ‘place where an animal creeps to’ ‘burying place’, ‘grave’ ‘hideout’ ‘place of rest’, ‘resting place’ ‘a fortified place’ ‘place where one goes to’ (privy, toilet) ‘house with a hall, palace’ ‘house of meeting for speaking or consulting’

The different structural techniques used to express the lexical content of nouns denoting locations suggest that the loss of the exponents of a category is not tantamount to a loss of the category itself. The type of location often remains (graves, dormitories, prisons etc. continue to exist), whereas the naming strategy changes from one structural type towards another.

The change of the status of the base form 213

To conclude, conceptual categories are not lost when their formal expression is eliminated since they are part of a general cognitive structure that evolves from the interaction of human beings with their environment. The loss of the indication of a particular conceptual category by means of bound morphemes is compensated for by the use of other morphological processes (basically compounding) or through the shift from morphology to syntax and thus the use of periphrases. 5. The change of the status of the base form The following section addresses the most important qualitative change in English morphology that serves as evidence for a shift of the encoding type of categorical information in word-formation towards a higher degree of analyticity. This change is related to the morphological status of the base form, which may be that of a root, a stem, or a word, and to the internal structure of words in general, i.e. whether lexical bases may change their form or are invariant. These changes affected the status of morphological marking since in root- and stem-based morphology the addition of bound morphemes is obligatory for lexical bases to be used as independent items (words), whereas in word-based morphology morphological marking is an option, but no requirement for the use of lexical bases as syntactic units. During the OE period, English underwent a change from a stem-based towards a word-based language type. Remnants of the former IndoEuropean (IE) root-based type of morphology still occurred in abundance, but they represented unproductive patterns and therefore constituted isolated phenomena. The change coincides with the transition from basevariant morphology, i.e. a type which allowed for alternations of the base form, to one in which the form of the lexical base is invariant. The trend towards invariant base forms may be interpreted as a progressive isolation or ‘closing’ of morpheme boundaries, by which morphologically and phonologically conditioned changes of the base form were given up in favor of a system in which no change of the lexical base occurred. From ME on, suffixation processes on a native basis did not cause a change of the form of the base, which means that English developed a system in which affixes are attached to morphologically and phonologically invariant base forms. Typologically speaking, such a structure corresponds to agglutination since the input to morphological processes is an invariant form and instances of fusion at the morpheme boundary are usually absent: morphemes tend to be

214 The typological change of English word-formation grouped together to larger units, but they preserve their formal shape, i.e. each of the morphemes is clearly segmentable. The existence of either open or isolated morpheme boundaries is not only determined by the presence or absence of any formal variation of the lexical base, but also by the existence or non-existence of formal variants of affixes. An affix that may change its form according to the type of lexical base it is attached to (e.g. PDE -IN: il-, ir-, in-, im-) creates fusion on the morpheme boundary, which is an indicator for the existence of non-isolated morpheme boundaries. The term “fusion” refers to a possible change of the morphological or phonological form of one or both of the morphemes involved in a synthetic structure. The existence of different suffix-forms in Germanic can be observed e.g. in Gothic, where deverbal nouns denoting actions were formed with the suffix -ni- which, depending on the quality of the final phoneme of the base verb, occurred as -aini-, -eini- or -#ni- (e.g. ah-ain-s “hush” from ahan “to remain silent”, lais-ein-s “doctrine, teachings” from laisjan “to teach” and mit-#n-s “thinking” from mit#-n “to think”, Krahe and Meid 1967: 50).57 In OE, such suffix alternations were unsystematic and, if they still occurred, opaque.58 Alternations of the form of suffixes indicate that these could assimilate to the phonological properties of the base. Thus, a new word-form was not merely a combination of two isolated morphemes which both retain their phonological properties, but a new phonological unit in which at least one of the morphemes assimilated to the form of the element which it was combined with. The result is a phonological unit where the morpheme boundary cannot be drawn in a clear-cut way, as both morphemes merged. Another example for a fusional structure are word-forms exhibiting umlaut, which was originally phonologically conditioned, triggered by Germanic suffixes including an /i/element (e.g. lang – *leng-iu – leng ‘length’), but which had become opaque already by the time OE came into existence. The concept of ‘fusion on the morpheme boundary’ was discussed e.g. by Reformatskij (1965: 13), who suggests three criteria that determine whether a language exhibits fusional structures or not: (1) lexical stems do not occur without affixes (2) lexical stems undergo formal changes (3) affixes have allomorphic variants.

The degree of fusion on the morpheme boundary and thus the cohesion between stem and affix is, according to the author, higher the more of these

The change of the status of the base form 215

three features have a positive value in a language, and decreases the more of these features have a negative value. A negative value for all of them indicates that morphological processes in a particular language, if these exist at all, are based on isolated morpheme boundaries, so that any instance of fusion on the morpheme boundary is absent. Consequently, lexical bases and affixes tend to exhibit a low degree of cohesion. This does, however, not necessarily mean that the respective language is analytic, since the existence of suffixes attached to an invariant base is typical for an agglutinating structure, which is a synthetic type of encoding categorical information, but one characterized by a lack of fusion. Therefore, a shift towards analyticity is indicated only by the combination of an isolation of the morpheme boundary and a loss of suffixes since in this case a language operates with isolated, predominantly simple morphemes only. A largescale loss of bound morphemes, however, presupposes that a language underwent a shift towards word-based morphology and thus towards isolated morpheme boundaries since only in this case a lexical base may occur without affixes to function as an autonomous lexical item. In other words, both quantitative and qualitative changes are interrelated. In this sense, closed or “isolated” morpheme boundaries are characteristic of languages in which lexical bases have the status of words: a lexical base cannot occur as an autonomous unit if it is not an isolated unit requiring additional morphological marking. Isolation is characteristic for analytic and agglutinating encoding types, since it implies either no indication of categorial information on the lexical base at all, or morphological marking by means of attaching bound morphemes to a closed morpheme boundary without altering the phonological shape of the base. The change of the status of the base form in English derivation can only be discussed with reference to the IE system of word-formation since in OE all three possible types of morphology (root-based, stem-based, and wordbased) can be observed. The first type is only found in remnants of the IE system, basically in the domain of ablaut formations, the second type was the most common one in early OE, but soon replaced by the third type. The following discussion will show that the morpheme boundary became progressively more isolated during the history from IE to early ME, which accompanied the quantitative changes documented above. I will start with root-based morphology, the oldest morphological type and the input system to Common Germanic and thus to OE.

216 The typological change of English word-formation 5.1. Root-based morphology In Indo-European, a word was composed of three morphological elements: (1) a root, (2) a stem-formative and (3) an inflectional ending. The root usually consisted of a consonantal skeleton into which different vowels according to particular ablaut patterns were inserted (e.g. IE *bhVr- ‘bear, carry’, which is found in Gothic bairan – bar – brum – baurans, Old High German beran – br – brum – giboran, ‘V’ standing for the ablaut vowel, cf. Szemerényi [1970] 1990: 80). The skeleton was most certainly the same for lexical items of different word-classes, i.e. it was word-class neutral. Information on word-class properties was indicated by morphological processes that were used to derive word-class-specific stems, such as alternation of the root vowel and/or the addition of particular stem-formatives, which in most cases were obligatory (although root-formation, where no stemformative was involved, existed as well). Alternation of the root vowel was based on the shifting accent in IE and found not only with verbs, but also with nouns. Furthermore, vowel alternation did not occur with lexical morphemes only, i.e. with roots, but also with grammatical morphemes (Szemerényi [1970] 1990: 76). In the case of nouns it is uncertain whether the alternation of the vocalic nucleus had any functional importance. It may have been the result of the shifting accent only, in which case it would have been purely mechanical. With verbs, however, gradation was probably partly mechanical, partly functional: as Prokosch (1939: 225) states, ablaut was caused by a shifting accent, but it also had a functional value, namely that of indicating aspectual categories and tense. With nouns, only the accent-based type of gradation can be reconstructed which, however, does not exclude the possibility that in an earlier period gradation of the vowel with nouns did have a functional value. The stem-formatives that were added to the lexical root fulfilled the function of both an inflectional and a derivational morpheme as they created an inflectional stem and thus indicated information on word-class and the inflectional type of the stem. Stem-formatives did not necessarily constitute syllables: in many cases they consisted of one phoneme only, which is why the term “formative” is preferred over the term “suffix” (Pinsker 1959: 207). Of the numerous stem-formatives available in IE, the following ones laid the foundation of the Germanic inflection classes of nouns: monophtongal: diphtongal: consonantal:

-e-/-o-, -!-ei-/-oi-/-i-, -eu-/-ou-/-u-, -$n-/-(n-/-n-, -$r-/-(r-/-r-es-/-os-, -ent-/-ont-/-nt(Prokosch 1939: 226).

The change of the status of the base form 217

Since stem-formatives could exhibit different ablaut grades in IE, they often formed groups of formally different, but related formatives (e.g. -n-/$n-/-n-).59 The formatives were followed by inflectional endings. While in IE nouns were inflected for two classes, one for thematic stems (those ending in a vowel) and one for athematic ones (Ringe 2006: 41), in Common Germanic nouns fell into more formal classes, depending on the nature of the IE stem vowel: vocalic stems: consonantic stems:

#-stems (incl. -w#-, -j#-), -stems (incl. -j-), i-stems, u-stems n-stems, r-stems, nt-stems, s-stems (Prokosch 1939: 226).

The fact that both verbs and nouns were derived from the same root means that there was no derivational relation between verbs and nouns and the other way around. The stem-formative was thus a derivational element which, when attached to the root, created a stem to which inflectional endings had to be added to create a word, i.e. an independent syntactic element. However, it also indicated grammatical categories, such as the respective inflection class. This observation shows that inflection and derivation were much more closely related in IE and Common Germanic (and thus in rootbased and stem-based morphology) than in OE and definitely in ME, were the separation into suffixes with predominantly grammatical function (inflections) and those with predominantly derivational function became stricter, as will be shown below. Next to word-class, stem-formatives also indicated categorical semantic information, such as instrument, action, agent etc. (Pinsker 1959: 210). A directional relationship between verbs, nouns and adjectives could be established by the addition of further derivational and stem-forming affixes to already existing stems, which resulted in so-called “secondary derivations”. In other words, a primary noun, which was the result of the addition of a stem-forming element to a consonantal skeleton, could be the base for further derivation, which then was directional. A secondary verb could, for instance, be formed from a primary base by means of adding the stemformative *-#j-. These verbs are the ancestors of the Germanic weak verbs. In many cases the base of secondary verbs was a root denoting an action or an agent (Bammesberger 1986: 36), from which the original meaning of these verbs, ‘perform an action’ or ‘act like an agent’, derives. This system of primary and secondary formations can be summarized as follows:

218 The typological change of English word-formation Morphological structure of IE derivatives (a) root + stem-formative + inflectional ending primary derivative: undirectional derivation (root is the same for V and N) (b) primary derivative + stem-formative + inflection secondary derivative: directional: N V, V N, V V, N N etc.

In (b), word-formation is based on ready-made stems and thus on lexical bases that already belong to a particular word-class. Note that in both cases inflectional morphology is obligatory in order for a stem to function as a word and thus to have a syntactic status. For the present study, the discussion of IE morphology is important as it explains the existence of numerous instances of stem-variability in OE, most of which were already fossilized forms deriving from a formerly productive application of the rules and conditions that caused this variation. The different patterns of stem-variability found in OE derived from two periods (IE and Common Germanic) and, basically, from two sources, umlaut and ablaut, next to some other, originally phonological processes which became morphologized over time, such as consonant lengthening and Anglo-Frisian Brightening. Stem-allomorphy triggered by umlaut was originally a purely phonological process in Germanic that became phonemized and, by the end of the OE period, must have been interpreted as a morphologically conditioned, unpredictable alternation (e.g. OE f%l ‘foul’ – fyl ‘filth’). Ablaut was originally a phonologically conditioned process in IE that was exploited morphologically as a marker of partly aspectual information, partly tense relations in the verbal paradigm.60 In OE, it occurred with a closed set of verbs only, which means that the process of vowel alternation of lexical bases was unproductive and maximally served as a model for some few analogue formations. Nouns and adjectives related to one of the ablaut forms of the base verb still formed a considerable part of the OE lexicon (e.g. brecan ‘to break’ – broc ‘breach, fragment’, etan ‘to eat’ – æt ‘food, act of eating’), but it is unclear if these were still considered to be derivationally related to the underlying verbs since the nature of the relation itself had already become unproductive. Moreover, no systematic correlation between a particular ablaut grade and a specific lexical meaning can be established. As Kastovsky (1992b: 421) states: At best, we notice certain preferences, which reflect the fact that the vowel quality had originally been linked to a specific derivational pattern, but for the Germanic languages no such correlation can be postulated any longer.

The change of the status of the base form 219

In this sense, deverbal nouns based on ablaut grades began to loose their morphological link with the underlying verb and thus became morphologically isolated lexemes. This may explain why the wide range of ablaut nouns found in OE disappeared towards the Early Modern English period, with only a handful of such nouns being left (e.g. sing – song, ride – road). ablaut was, however, partly preserved in the inflectional domain of verbs since here the alternations were reinterpreted as tense marked forms, i.e. they became entirely morphologically determined. The loss of the IE ablaut pattern (and the concomittant shift from rootbased towards stem-based morphology) can be attributed to two factors. The first one is the change of the IE stress pattern, where stress was movable, to a fixed first-syllable-stress in the Germanic languages. The system of ablaut formations was possible due to shifting accent, by which unstressed vowels assumed different qualities: they could occur in their “full” form, or exhibit either a lengthened or a reduced grade.61 Also the loss of the vocalic root, the so-called “Schwundstufe”, was related to a shift of accent (Szemerényi [1970] 1990: 104). The loss of the movable accent and the development of a fixed accent on the first syllable in Germanic destroyed the partial phonological conditioning of ablaut. In accordance with the rise of a tense-based system of verb inflection in Common Germanic, ablaut alternations were reinterpreted as morphological markers for the emerging past tense and past participle opposition (Kastovsky 2006b: 63). A similar reinterpretation occurred with many umlaut forms: when the phonological conditions for umlaut were lost, the traces that this process left behind were reinterpreted as morphologically marked, e.g. as plural forms (PDE foot – feet) or nominalizations (OE standan ‘to stand’ – sted(e) ‘place’). This holds particularly for those cases in which a suffix that caused the umlaut was lost or where it lost the /i/ element that had originally triggered umlaut (e.g. OE lang – leng < *lang-i*u). The second factor that favored the loss of ablaut alternation was the increase in secondary verbs and nouns, i.e. those which were formed by the addition of further derivational/stem-forming affixes to primary nouns and verbs which already contained a stem-formative. This way, the unity of root + stem-formative was progressively taken as an inseparable morphological unit to which new formatives were added. Consequently, the root ceased to exhibit alternation of the root vowel, which was the beginning of a change towards stem-based morphology, i.e. a type that operated with “ready made” stems that did not change their internal structure. However, they could not occur as autonomous units (‘words’) without a derivational

220 The typological change of English word-formation and/or inflectional morpheme either. Ablaut patterns, which were remnants of the IE system of root-based morphology and variable accent, survived into OE, but they had become unpredictable and thus cannot be regarded as instances of productive root-based morphology. The loss of ablaut as a regular phonologically and morphologically conditioned process, on the one hand, and the preservation of entire word-families related by means of ablaut in OE, on the other hand, make it difficult to decide in what way pairs like ridan ‘to ride’ – rd ‘a ride, road’ were associated with each other by the speakers and thus whether they can be analyzed as transparent. One may assume that the loss of the formal relation between two or more members of once morphologically related words was a gradual process that accompanied the progressive shift towards invariant stems and stem-based morphology. This shift had an important consequence for the cohesion between lexical bases and derivational elements. Due to the variability of the form of the base in root-based and partly in stem-based morphology, a suffix could interact with the root and thus cause formal changes of the vocalic nucleus, as e.g. in fleon ‘to flee’ – flyh-t ‘flight’. In such a system the degree of fusion between base form and suffix is higher than in one in which the base form is invariant since the morpheme boundaries are less rigid. The resulting word is not merely the result of a combination of two invariant morphemes, but a new phonological unit in which one element (here: the base) changes its form under the influence of the one which it was combined with (the suffix). Both elements fuse into a new unit. However, the loss of the conditions that determined the changes of the lexical base must hve resulted in a progressive loss of transparency of these originally complex units since the morpheme boundaries became more difficult to be recognized. After the loss of stem- and suffixal variation, which corresponds to an isolation of the morpheme boundaries, the morphological indication of categorical information became agglutinating in character, based on invariant lexical stems. Thus, morphologically complex words were composed of a cumulative addition of morphemes without any instances of fusion. Many products of the historically older pattern, which involved fusional suffixes, came to be interpreted as monomorphemic units as they did not correspond to the new structural type. This tendency may be responsible for the weakening of the suffixes -D, -EL, and -EN, i.e. those suffixes which in earlier periods, when umlaut had still been productive, could trigger alternation of the lexical base they were attached to.

The change of the status of the base form 221

Another consequence of this development was that the distinction between inflectional and derivational morphemes became more rigid after the stem-formatives were lost. Originally, these formatives indicated both derivational and inflectional information (word-class and inflection class, next to semantic information). In the new, base-invariant system that operated with stems suffixes came to be either derivational or inflectional in character, and if they were derivational they tended to precede the inflectional ending.

5.2. Stem-based morphology During the common Germanic period stem-formatives began to loose their morphological function since they either (1) merged with case/number markers and thus lost their class-indicating function, (2) underwent merger with the lexical base, i.e. they were reinterpreted as part of a stem, (3) were reinterpreted as derivational suffixes, or (4) were syncopated altogether. The loss of the stem-formative as a productive morphological element was the first reduction of the morphological structure of words from three constituents in pre-Germanic times (root + stem formative + inflectional ending) to two in Germanic and OE (stem + inflection).62 Thus, inflectional endings were attached to morphologically non-segmentable (underived) base forms. The resulting forms have to be analyzed as stem + case/number ending, i.e. as binary units, since the stem-formative cannot be reconstructed for all inflected word-forms, at least not in OE. Consider the following examples from Campbell (1959: ch. 9), which document the transition in the structure of nouns from three elements to two: (7)

The development of the morphological structure of nouns a. pre-Gmc *stan-a-z > Gmc stan-az > OE stn-ø ‘stone’ (NOM sg, astems) b. pre-Gmc *stan-a-i > Gmc stan-ai > OE stn-e ‘stone’ (DAT sg, a stems) c. Common Gmc *sa- ia-i > WestGmc *sagg-i > OE se -ø ‘man’ (NOM sg, ia-stems)

The original tripartite structure became largely unproductive in Common Germanic since a consistent representation of the stem-formative (-a- and ia- in the examples above) cannot be reconstructed for all case/number combinations in this period, and in those cases where it was still recover-

222 The typological change of English word-formation able it had become functionless. Since the formatives served as indicators of inflection class the subdivision of the inflectional system based on different inflectional classes in general began to loose its functional value. Different inflection classes can be reconstructed also for OE, but the membership of nouns to these classes had already become opaque and was no longer overtly marked. This might have caused or at least facilitated crossparadigmatic syncretisms, i.e. the merger of case/number markers of different inflectional classes, leading to the dissolution of the class-based system of nominal inflection. Consider, for instance, the inflection of nouns of the a-stem class in OE (se ‘man’): sg NOM ACC GEN DAT

pl se"&-ø se"&-ø se"&-es se"&-e

se"&-as se"&-as se"&-a se"&-um

The inflection of the noun does not allow for the reconstruction of the IE stem-formative -o- (> Gmc. -a-) which this word had originally been equipped with. The formative either merged with the inflectional ending, as the nominative plural form -as (Germanic -z) shows, or it was reinterpreted as a case/number marker when the original inflectional ending was syncopated, as in the genitive plural, where the IE inflection was *-om/-#m.63 From the single inflected forms one can hardly recognize why the noun was a member of the a-stem class, i.e. the membership to the respective inflection class was more based on historical reconstruction than on overt marking for OE. Reinterpretations that affected the internal structure of base forms occurred in derivation as well. Some of the OE suffixes were originally stemformatives in IE and thus morphological elements that were attached to roots to derive word-class specific stems, e.g. -D (PDE -th) (see below). Other formatives merged with the lexical base and cannot be reconstructed as independent morphological units for OE, such as -m- or -s-. Table 62 illustrates the compositional character of some IE stems (=root+stemformative) and their OE reflexes:

The change of the status of the base form 223 Table 63. IE stem-formatives and their reflexes in OE (forms listed in Pinsker 1959: 209) IE root

stem-formative

IE stem

OE stem

hl#-

-m-t-s-dh-

*%hl'-m*%hl'-t*%hl-s*%hl-dh-

gl'mgl#dglæsglæd-

dheu-

-l-dh-s-n-

*dh(e)e-l*dheu-dh*dhee-s*dh(e)e-n(e)-

dwel-(-an) dyd-(-erian) dys-(-ig) dun-(-ø)

‘gloom’ ‘glow’ ‘glass’ ‘gladness’ ‘to err’ ‘to deceive’ ‘foolish’ ‘dark (color)’

As illustrated above, many stem-formatives coalesced with the roots they were attached to into non-complex stem-forms, i.e. they were reinterpreted as part of the stem. The reason for this reanalysis can be attributed to the increase in secondary formations, i.e. derivations from primary nouns and verbs by means of adding further stem-forming affixes, which resulted in directional derivations. This way, a second layer of stems was established and became dominant over time, by which the originally complex structure of the primary stems came to be re-interpreted as morphologically simple over time. Four of the IE stem-formatives survived into OE as more or less productive noun suffixes, namely -D, -EL, -EN, and, probably, -OR. Each of these suffixes occurred with different realizations, which result from various vocalic extensions, i.e. from the fusion with vowels that were originally part of the stems which the formatives were attached to, as with -D (-i#-, -ti-, -tu-, -ta-, -ot-) or -EL (-il-, -ol-, -ul-, -els-, -ils-). The four suffixes, however, tended to be re-analyzed as part of the stem in OE for two reasons. Firstly, the suffixation process with these suffixes often involved i-umlaut, by which a phonological split of the derivatives from the base was induced when i-umlaut had become unproductive (e.g. d#n ‘to do’ – dæd ‘deed', beorgan ‘to shelter’ – byrgels ‘grave’, fastnian ‘to fasten’ – fæsten ‘castle’). The suffixed word-forms that survived into later periods lost the phonological relation to their base forms. The consequent split between base and derivative became more radical when English completed the change towards a base-invariant language and thus towards a language in which suffixation processes generally did not alter the form of the base. In other words, a derivative that exhibited umlaut became more and more difficult

224 The typological change of English word-formation to be related to the lexical base form when all types of base alternation had become unproductive. Secondly, many of the nouns with -D, -EL, -EN and -OR had no base form in OE (e.g. -EL hrægl ‘dress’, sweotol ‘sword’, -OR: broor ‘brother’), which means they could not be interpreted as derived formations any more. In stem-based morphology, the base is not a consonantal skeleton into which different vowels may be inserted, but a unit to which suffixes are added to complete the meaning of the lexical stem and to provide grammatical information in order to convert them into words, i.e. autonomous syntactic units. In this sense, stems are purely abstract units because they have no syntactic value. The addition of bound morphemes indicating grammatical information (=inflections) and/or derivational (conceptual) categories is obligatory. Consider the following OE example: (8)

Morphological operations in stem-based morphology Lexical stem: Verb: Noun (Person): Noun (Action):

htht-an ‘persecute-INF’, ht-a ‘persecute-PL’ ht-er-e, eht-end ‘persecutor’ ht-nes ‘persecution’.

Here, both inflectional and derivational processes are stem-based, i.e. suffixes are attached to the lexical base proper and the form of the base is invariant. From a typological perspective, morphological operations of this type are based on isolated morpheme boundaries (=formal invariancy) and therefore characterized by a lower degree of fusion of the base with the suffix. Nevertheless, stem-based morphology still exhibits a higher degree of syntheticity than word-based morphology (which is discussed below), since stems depend on the attachment of bound morphemes in order to occur as independent lexical items with a particular grammatical status. In spite of the dominance of invariant base forms in stem-based morphology, instances of fusion between base form and affix may also be found with this morphological type. They are, however, usually restricted to the transition zone between base and affix, i.e. to the morpheme boundary, and thus tend to affect the quality of the final sound of lexical bases only. In PDE word-formation on a non-native basis, for instance, this type of fusion is phonologically conditioned and reflected by two phenomena, a segmental and a suprasegmental one. The first is the change of the final consonant of the base form induced by the affix attached, as found in nonnative word-forms in PDE, e.g. skeptic /k/ – skepticism /s/, politics /k/ –

The change of the status of the base form 225

politician //, which exhibit velar softening. Here, both the base and the suffix undergo fusion, due to the phonological assimilation of the final consonant of the base. Morphophonemic alternations of suprasegmental nature are changes of the stress pattern induced by suffixation or prefixation processes. The position of the main stress may be shifted in two ways: either stress falls on the affix itself, as in 'demonstrate – demonstr'ation, ar'range – 'rearrange, or an affix is stress-determining, as in 'equal – e'quality or 'drama – dra'matic. In the latter case, the stress shift may change the quality of the vowel that was stressed in the form without suffix, i.e. the suffix may change the internal structure of the base form. This suggests that the morpheme boundary is less isolated in stem-based morphology than in a system where no change of the internal structure of the base, neither morphologically, nor phonologically conditioned, is possible, as in PDE derivation on a native basis. As it is argued here, the degree of fusion between base and suffix is higher when both morphemes may exert influence on each other and thus fuse into a new phonological form than in a system where base and suffix constitute discrete units that do not influence each other. Compared to root-based morphology, in stem-based morphology the base of derivational processes, a lexical stem, is much less liable to fusion since stems often do not change their internal form and thus allow for alternations on the morpheme boundary only. Assimilation processes may also occur with suffixes: suffixes may have several allomorphic variants whose distribution is regulated by the phonological properties of the base form (consider e.g. the variants of the PDE non-native affixes in- or -ion), which leads to fusion on the morpheme boundary with the base since the combination between the two morphemes does not result in a mere sequence of discrete, invariant units. This idea is reflected in Alpatov’s (1985) distinction between cohesive affixes and noncohesive affixes. Cohesive affixes undergo fusion with the base, i.e. they have variants that are morphologically predictable. Non-cohesive affixes are generally invariant, which means they create word-forms in which the morpheme boundary between base and affix can be clearly identified. In an earlier article, Alpatov (1979) claims that the feature of fusion (and thus the existence of suffixal variation and variation of the base form) is more significant for the morphological classification of languages than other features that are traditionally correlated with the inflecting and agglutinating types, because it predicts the morphological structure of the word. In this sense, the difference between a more or a less synthetic language with respect to word-formation is not only based on the question of whether bound

226 The typological change of English word-formation morphemes are used or not, but also on the structure of the word-formation products. The use of non-cohesive, i.e. invariant affixes creates more agglutinating structures (invariant stem and a string of non-cohesive affixes), whereas that of cohesive affixes creates more fusional ones. The shift from root- (IE) over stem- (early OE) to word-based morphology (late OE, ME) in English may thus be interpreted as a progressive shift towards isolated morpheme boundaries and thus towards strictly invariant lexical and derivational morphemes (with native elements). All of the native suffixes that survived into Middle English are invariant and thus unable to create instances of fusion on the morpheme boundary. In combination with a loss of suffixes, one may thus postulate a clear trend towards more isolating encoding strategies of lexical information. 5.3. Word-based morphology Stem-based morphology started to be replaced by word-based morphology already during the OE period (Kastovsky 1992b: 416, 2006b: 68). The replacement was the result of a second stage of morphological reanalysis: stems, which required the attachment of bound morphemes in order to function as autonomous units in syntax, were analyzed as words, due to the increasing presence of unmarked base forms, i.e. stems which lacked inflectional endings. In word-based morphology, the base form for morphological operations is a word, i.e. a unit that may occur as an autonomous lexical item without additional derivational elements or inflectional endings. The categories ‘lexeme’ and ‘word’ coincide. The typological shift from root-based to stem-based morphology and further to word-based morphology can be illustrated with the example of the forms for the modern English noun and verb love. The OE verb lufian ‘to love’ is a secondary formation that was originally derived from a primary stem by means of the attachment of the stem-formative -oj- which, next to its derivational function, assigned the respective inflection class to the derived verb. Hogg (1992: 157) and Kastovsky (2006a: 164) reconstructed the fifth-century pre-OE form as *luf-#j-an (‘to love’), which allows for the reconstruction as presented in Example (9). As the example shows, the historical development brought about a progressive reduction of the morphological structure of words through the loss of the stem-formative or its merger with the inflection (see 9b), respectively. The result was a reanalysis of the original tripartite morphological structure of words to-

The change of the status of the base form 227

wards a binary one. Derivation and inflection became formally and functionally distinct: while in root-based morphology the stem-formative indicated both the inflection class and the word class of the resulting stem, in stem-based morphology the inflection class is inherent in the stem and information on word class remains unmarked, i.e. it can be read off only from the inflection. (9)

From root-based to word-based Morphology: Verbs (example: ‘love’) a. pre-OE b. OE c. ME

root lufstem lufword love

stem-formative inflection (primary derivative) -#j-an inflection -ian

A similar development can be observed with nouns: (10)

From root-based to word-based Morphology: Nouns (example: ‘son’) a. pre-OE b. OE c. PDE

root sunstem sunword son

stem-formative -uinflection -u

inflection -z

In (10), the stem-formative was reanalyzed as inflectional ending, probably due to the fact that otherwise no inflection would have been left in nominative singular contexts after Germanic *-z was syncopated. The reanalysis of the stem-formative -u- was made possible by the fact that it had no function in a system that came to be progressively based on stems and not on roots that were usually unspecified for word class. In some cases, both the stemformative and the inflectional ending were lost, as with Common Germanic nominative singular *hand-uz (IE *-u-s) > OE hand-ø, where we may postulate a zero-morpheme in the nominative and accusative singular as the stem occurs with a case/number marker in other contexts (e.g. genitive, dative singular hand-a, dative plural hand-um). The presence of nouns unmarked for the nominative and accusative singular triggered a fundamental change of the stem-based system of inflection and derivation. Forms unmarked for the nominative singular were

228 The typological change of English word-formation found with all nouns of the numerically dominant a-stem class (masculine and neuter), with many nouns of the #-stem class (lr-ø ‘learning’ vs. gief-u ‘gift’), the i-stem class ( iest-ø ‘guest’ vs. win-e ‘friend’), and that of ustems (sun-u ‘son’ vs. hand-ø ‘hand’). It was, however, still marked with a subgroup of nouns of the o-stem class (those with a short vowel, e.g. gif-u, far-u) and the u-stem class, although both classes also included unmarked nouns, i.e. case/number marking was not obligatory in all contexts even within a single inflection class. Thus, in OE nouns occurred with and without inflection for the nominative singular, and also the accusative singular was unmarked in many classes. Marked forms soon came to constitute a minority under the influence of the dominant a-stem nouns, which over time integrated nouns of other inflection classes as well, such as masculine nouns of the u-stem class (Fernández 1982: 218). Inflection for the nominative singular is decisive in this respect since, as Kastovsky (2006a: 166) suggests, the nominative is semantically the most neutral case. Thus, uninflected nominative forms were likely to be interpreted as unmarked base forms, especially when endingless nouns outnumbered those which were still inflected for the nominative singular, that is, when a certain quantity of nouns had lost its formerly complex morphological structure. The process was supported by phonological developments that occurred simultaneously. In those cases where the marker of the nominative singular still existed, it syncretized with the accusative, genitive and dative singular endings, e.g. within the inflectional paradigm of the #-stem nouns (e.g. NOM far-u > -e, ACC far-e, GEN far-e, DAT far-e). Consequently, there was no formal distinction between the four different case/number combinations, as all of them were -e. The process was either induced or accelerated through the weakening of final vowels to shwa, but it is unclear whether the weakening was the consequence of the new (Germanic) stress pattern or rather that of the loss of the functional value of inflections, due to the existence of a large number unmarked forms and a high degree of syncretism in the OE inflectional paradigm in general. Consider that only nine inflections were used to express an overall of 24 different case/number/gender combinations distinguishable (Lass 1992: 105). Whatever the relation between cause and consequence was, inflectional marking was either lost in nominative and accusative singular contexts (above all with nouns of the a-stem class) or it did not formally distinguish between different case/number combinations (as with nouns of the #-stem class). Table 64 indicates the inflectional paradigm for of ‘thief’ (a-stem class), faru ‘journey’ (#-stem class with a short or ‘light’ stem syllable), and ld ‘way’ (#-stem class with long/heavy stem-syllable).

The change of the status of the base form 229 Table 64. The inflection of OE nominal stems and the reinterpretation of the morphological structure

NOM sg ACC sg GEN sg DAT sg

a-stems

#-stems #-stems (short syllable) (long syllable)

reanalysed forms

#of-ø #of-ø #of-es #of-e

far-u (>-e) far-e far-e far-e

#of# #of# #of# -es #of# -e

l!d-ø l!d-e l!d-e l!d-e

fare# fare# fare# fare#

Here, the OE nominative and accusative singular forms of the numerically dominant a-stem class and the nominative singular forms found in other inflectional classes, such as stems with long syllables of the #-stem class (ld), were unmarked base-forms that had the status of words.64 One might, of course, interpret the nominative and accusative singular zero-inflection ø as a morpheme, since parallel forms in which these case/number combinations were overtly marked existed, such as with #-stems with short stem syllable (-u). The lack of an explicit marker in of-ø thus contrasts with overtly marked forms like far-u, by which the assumption of a zeromorpheme would be justified and the unmarked forms had to be interpreted as marked ones with phonologically empty realization of the case/number information. In this case, stem-based morphology would still have been the dominant structural type in inflection. However, in many cases where the nominative singular and all other case/number combinations were still marked, syncretisms led to a leveling of differential marking of categorical information. One may assume that especially in those cases where the nominative singular became identical with the marker of all other cases, as in the case of o-stems with short syllables (see far-u > far-e in Table 64), these markers came to be reanalyzed as part of the stem since they had lost their functional value: the suffix did not indicate a specific case/number combination. Case/number marking became thus restricted to some few contexts only, namely to those in which the inflectional ending remained distinctive and thus functional (the genitive singular or the nominative plural of a-stems). Otherwise, unmarked forms predominated, which led to a general shift towards word-based morphology. This new type was characterized by closed morpheme boundaries (indicated by ‘#’ above), i.e. additional morphemes were added optionally, but not obligatorily (see Lass 1992 for the use of dative -e), and the base was an independent unit susceptible of syntactic transposition.

230 The typological change of English word-formation The function of final -e in late OE and its reinterpretation as part of the stem in ME should be discussed more in detail. Consider the development of masc -*a-stems, a subgroup of a-stems. These nouns usually ended in -e in the nominative singular, i.e. they were morphologically marked in this context and thus contrasted to the unmarked forms of the a-stem nouns and the groups of unmarked nouns found in other classes. However, this class also included forms which were unmarked for the nominative and accusative singular, as the paradigm for se ‘man’ shows, or the suffix did not indicate a specific case/number combination, but was the same in different contexts, as with here ‘army’. NOM ACC GEN DAT

sese"&-ø se"&-ø se"&-es se"&-e

herher-e her-e her&-es her&-e

The -e which occurred in the nominative singular with nominal stems like her- was originally preceded by a stem-formative (* after short, i* after long syllables) in Common Germanic, i.e. the stem exhibited i-umlaut. The structure of these nouns in IE was as follows (Campbell 1959: 229): Common Gmc *sa-*-ai > West Gmc *sagg-*-  > OE se -e/se ‘man’ Common Gmc *'ar-*-ai > West Gmc *'ar-*-  > OE her -e/her-e ‘army’

The case/number marker -e was eliminated in the nominative and accusative singular with some nouns of the same inflection class, which gave rise to unmarked forms like se or cynn ‘race’, probably in analogy to the nouns of the a-stem class, which had the same inflectional pattern, the same grammatical gender (masculine and neuter), and which were regularly unmarked for the nominative singular (as well as accusative singular) context. Unmarked forms thus alternated with marked ones within the same class. In those cases in which a nominative singular inflection was preserved, as in her-e, hierd-e ‘shepherd’, hwæt-e ‘wheat’, or læ-e ‘physician’, the -e became functionless as it did not even mark the most general distinction of case systems, namely that between oblique and non-oblique cases: the nouns had the same form in nominative, dative and accusative singular contexts. At this stage a progressive reinterpretation of the inflection as part of the stem must have set in, which was partly motivated by the absence of any functional value of inflections, partly by the dominance of unmarked forms, both within the same and in other inflection classes. In other words,

The change of the status of the base form 231

the existence of unmarked stems facilitated the reinterpretation of those ending in -e as monomorphemic units, a tendency that was fully borne out through the complete leveling of vocalic case/number distinctions under shwa. Generally, the leveling of final vowels under shwa meant the loss of the vocalic oppositions between /e/, /a/ and /u/ in unstressed positions that had still existed in early West Saxon and which was important to mark differences in case. In other words, many case/number combinations were purely vocalic and thus depended on the distinct quality of these vowels, which means that the different types of categorical information came to be leveled on the morphological level when the vocalic distinctions were eliminated. Under these conditions, lexical stems were progressively interpreted as words, especially after final unstressed -e underwent a gradual loss between 1200 and 1400 (Minkova 1983: 194). All remaining instances of grammatical marking, namely the genititve singular (strong: -es, weak: -en) and the nominative plural (strong: -as, weak: -en), became word-based.65 However, these suffixes could not be interpreted as fusional case/number markers any longer, since the marking of case had been lost after the reinterpretation of -e as part of the stem at the latest. The consequence was a split of the fusional expression of case and number, by which number and one of the functions of the OE genitive, namely possession, came to be expressed by means of bound morphemes (-es and -en, the latter in Southern dialects until the fourteenth century), whereas case was indicated on the syntactic level by means of prepostional constructions and the order of constituents. Bound morphemes, if they were used at all, were thus attached to lexical base forms that exhibited isolated morpheme boundaries. Lexical bases could be used as syntactic units without morphological modification, i.e. their form did not have to be extracted from an inflectional paradigm. Those instances of morphological marking that were preserved in English became agglutinating in type, each grammatical morpheme indicating one particular type of information only. Unmarked forms came to dominate also in the verbal domain. Since the loss of verb inflection, especially that of the infinitive ending -an, cannot have been caused by phonetic weakening only, one may assume processes of analogy at work here, that is, an assimilation of the morphological structure of verbs to the unmarked base forms of nouns, as Kastovsky (2006b: 71) suggests: Since the nominal system had already moved towards word-based inflection, it is not unlikely that this feature was carried over to the verbal system,

232 The typological change of English word-formation creating an unmarked base form by the loss of the infinitive ending, allowing phonological erosion [of -an] […].

Since lexical bases came to be generally uninflected, the formal difference between lexical classes, e.g. verbs and nouns, was lost in those cases where no new derivational affix was attached: love (< luf-ian) – love (< luf-u), fight (< feoht-an) – fight (< [ge-]feoht-ø). Since in PDE verb derivation is primarily affixless, except for those instances in which French-based suffixes occur with non-native bases (legal-ize, pur-ify, chlorin-ate), the derivational relationship between noun and verb can only be reconstructed by means of either historical or semantic criteria (see Marchand 1964). To conclude, what was left in English after the change towards unmarked lexical base forms was completed during the ME period was a small number of suffixes that were attached to invariant base forms that had assumed the status of words. Suffixation in general became agglutinating with morphological processes on a native basis, with no instances of fusion at the morpheme boundary between different types of morphemes involved. The changes in inflectional morphology had typological consequences for the overall morphological system and thus for derivation as well. First, with the word-based morphological type any alternation of the base related to affixation processes disappeared.66 Since the OE lexicon was characterized by pervasive stem allomorphy which was, however, completely morphologically governed, derivational relations that once existed between pairs of words progressively lost their transparency if the derivatives exhibited allomorphy.67 The sources of stem-alternations that may still be found in OE were originally purely phonological processes, namely (1) i-umlaut, (2) Verner’s Law, (3) loss of medial /x/, (4) consonant lengthening, (5) palatalization, (6) Anglo-Frisian Brightening, (7) back-mutation, and (8) changes in the quantity of vowels (lengthening, shortening) (Pilch 1979: Ch. 3, Kastovsky 1992b: 423). While the sound changes related to these processes could originally be described by rules, the progressive loss of the conditions that regulated the operation of these rules led to a reanalysis of the stem-alternating forms as morphologically conditioned changes. Pairs like deman – d#m, trymman – trum, fæt – fatu or biddan – gebodu and other related derivatives which the OE lexicon was cluttered with can be analyzed as unpredictable variants (allomorphs) of the respective stem only. Umlaut, for instance, must be considered as unproductive in OE since the phonological environment that had motivated the change of the stem vowel cannot be constructed for OE in most of the cases. Those suffixes that had caused umlaut in pre-OE and which were preserved in OE had lost

The change of the status of the base form 233

the /i/ or /j/ element that conditioned the change by the time OE came into existence, e.g. - in lang – leng-, earm – ierm- (>PGmc */-i*(u)/) or -el in ber-an – bir-el (>PGmc */-il-/).68 The unpredictability of stem variation led to analogical restructuring, by which most of these alternations were lost or replaced by non-alternating word-based patterns (Kastovsky 1992b: 415, 426, 2006a: 172). One of the clearest indicators is the elimination of umlaut-forms (the main factor was the unrounding of round front vowels) and of all nominal derivatives that were originally based on one of the ablaut grades of the verb, which has been rather radical in English compared to other Germanic languages where we still find such pairs in abundance.69 The new, stem-invariant pattern led to more transparency, both in inflection and derivation, but, in combination with a significant reduction in the use of affixes, it also resulted in a reduction of the complexity of word-fields in the sense that it reduced the occurrence and the growth of larger families of derivationally related words (see also 2.6). Compare the different word-fields based on different forms of one and the same lexical base in OE with those in PDE: OE:

ber-: beran ‘to carry’, bora ‘messenger’, byre ‘descendant’, byrel ‘co rier’, byrd ‘what is carried’ (cf. ge-byrd ‘birth’), byrden ‘load’ g-: gn ‘to go’, in-/ut-/ofergang ‘entrance/exit/crossing’, genge ‘passage’, gangern ‘privy’ f%l-: f%l (neu) ‘foulness, impurity’, f%l (fem) ‘a foul place’, f%l!ce ‘foully’, fylnes ‘foulness’, fyl ‘filth’, f%lian ‘to foul’ PDE: bear (+ birth, burden as fossilized formations) go, ongoing (+ N-goer) foul, foully, foulness (+ filth as fossilized formation).

Since derivation based on one of the ablaut grades of the verb and umlaut were unproductive in OE, many of the relations were probably not transparent in that period. Nevertheless, these forms were still used as bases for new derivations and compounding. Word-fields that derive from various modifications of one and the same lexical (verbal) base became much smaller in later periods of English and are usually based on non-native morphological elements. 5.4. The development towards isolated morpheme boundaries The change of the morphological status of the base form can be interpreted as an indicator for the shift towards a higher degree of analyticity in Eng-

234 The typological change of English word-formation lish derivation since it represents the progressive isolation of morpheme boundaries and thus the loss of fusional structures. With the shift from rootbased to stem-based morphology, formal alternations of the base became unproductive, due to the loss of phonological processes that triggered these alternations and an increase in secondary formations. Lexical bases became invariant stems, which still required morphological marking in order to be used as autonomous lexical units, but otherwise remained unchanged. In a next step, during the transition from stems to words, the morpheme boundary of lexical bases became entirely isolated: morphological marking in general was not obligatory any more and lexemes were used as autonomous units (words). The progressive closing of the morpheme boundary of baseforms from IE to OE/early ME can be illustrated as shown in Table 65. Table 65. From root-based to stem-based to word-based morphology Morphological type

Properties

Root-based

(1) internal modification of the base form (2) obligatory presence of stem-formative (F) (3) obligatory presence of inflectional ending abstract structure of words: xVxx- + -F- + -Infl

Stem-based

(1) no internal variability of the base form (2) morphological marking possible only on both ends of the morpheme (3) addition of bound morphemes is obligatory (4) fusion on the morpheme boundary is possible21 abstract structure of words: xxxx- + -Infl

Word-based

(1) no internal variability of the base (2) morphological marking is optional (3) marking occurs without any instances of fusion (4) morphemes have isolated morpheme boundaries (#) abstract structure of words: xxx#

The developments had a far-ranging consequence for the status of morphological marking: the isolation of the morpheme boundary of lexical bases led to a system in which morphology was not obligatory to create words from lexical stems since in word-based morphology the categories lexeme

The change of the status of the base form 235

and word coincide. Morphological marking thus became optional, a device to express additional information, but not needed to create words out of stems. In other words, English came to operate with unmarked, invariant base forms that functioned as words without any inflectional or derivational material. In this situation, those instances of morphological marking that were preserved became agglutinating and partly semantically determined (inherent inflections in Booij’s [1996] terms): affixes were attached to invariant base forms, although their attachment was not a grammatical requirement in the strictest sense, but partly semantically determined, as e.g. with plual markers. The resulting optional status of morphological marking may have accelerated the loss of morphological exponents in both derivation and inflection. With isolated morpheme boundaries, the indication of categorical information tended to be realized outside the morpheme boundary of lexical bases, thus becoming predominantly analytic. At this point, we may witness the progressive loss of the internal complexity of words, by which several types of morphological operations (e.g. stem formation, inflection) gradually lost their functional importance. The loss of complexity was mainly due to the merger of morpheme boundaries, so that once complex forms were interpreted as simplexes. In a first step, stem-formatives merged with the root or with inflectional suffixes (or they were reinterpreted as suffixes) if they were not syncopated. Thus, a stem did not have to be formed by means of a separate morphological operation, but came to be a “ready-made” unit to which only inflectional endings and, optionally, derivational suffixes were added. In a second step, stems were reanalyzed as words when inflectional endings were lost and when elements that originally had the status of suffixes were reinterpreted as part of the stem (e.g. with -th and -el, as in strength, thistle), due to their occurrence with base forms that exhibited unproductive formal changes (e.g. umlaut). This development towards the progressive loss of originally obligatory morphological operations can be illustrated as follows (dotted lines indicate a possible development): (1) Root-based Morphology (2) Stem-based Morphology (3) Word-based Morphology

root +

stem formative

+ inflection

stem (+ derivational affix) + inflection word

ø

Figure 21. The progressive shift from root-based to word-based morphology

236 The typological change of English word-formation Any modification of the “word” in (3) is thus optional since no morphological operation is required for creating a unit that is fully specified for the type of semantic and grammatical information relevant in a given language. The question that arises from the development sketched above is why morphological elements undergo formal merger and thus come to be perceived as a non-complex unit that serves as input for further modifications. The reasons for this development lie in the loss of the functional value of those morphological elements that underwent reanalysis or syncopation over time, namely stem-formatives and, at a later time, inflectional endings and many derivational suffixes. Stem-formatives lost their function as stembuilding elements indicating semantic information, word-class and inflection class when the number of secondary formations increased. In a next step, that is, when the system had changed to stem-based morphology, the number of unmarked base-forms became dominant in OE and inflections lost their function as indicators of case/number combinations. The rise of unmarked base-forms may have been phonologically conditioned, partly being the result of the weakening of final unstressed vowels when stress became fixed on the initial syllable. Consequently, final vowels merged into shwa, which destroyed vocalic distinctions that were functional in those cases where inflections consisted of a vowel only (namely -a, -e, -u). Differences in case could thus not be indicated unambiguously any more, and the expression of case was transferred onto the syntactic level and thus encoded analytically, i.e. outside the lexical stem. However, phonological changes are not the only source of these developments. Changes on the morphological level were decisive as well, e.g. the reanalysis or loss of stem-formatives, intra- and cross-paradigmatic syncretisms, which led to the leveling of case/number distinctions, and processes of analogy. In this sense, the word-based morphological system of PDE is the result of a development that had started already during the transition from IE to Common Germanic and which consisted basically in the progressive reduction of the morphological complexity of lexemes through re-analyses of originally complex forms as simple ones. Later, case marking was eliminated, by which unmarked base forms became the norm and morphological marking in general became optional, that is, not required by grammar. The change from a base-variant towards a base-invariant language destroyed the original derivational relation that had existed between different pairs of words which exhibited stem-variation. With the reduction in the use of derivational affixes and the loss of inflections English shifted from a pre-

Language contact and the re-introduction of stem-based morphology 237

dominantly synthetic language towards a predominantly isolating language with respect to the indication of both grammatical and lexical information. 6. Language contact and the re-introduction of stem-based morphology During the ME period and afterwards a second structural type was added to English derivation, the so-called word-formation on a non-native basis, which established itself in English as the result of two major external influences. One was the influx of French loans, which began in the thirteenth century and surfaced in full extent in the Early Modern English period, in which the English lexicon underwent an unprecedented growth rate (cf. Nevalainen 1999). The other one was the immense lexical influence from Latin that took place during the English Renaissance. Both events caused a flood the English lexicon not only with foreign lexis, but also increased the number of new productive derivational affixes which were separated from these loan words and used for new combinations in English. The morphological system of Old French and Latin was stem-based, which means that together with the large number of lexical items and the use of affixes that were separated from these, stem-based morphology was added to the native, word-based system. This new derivational pattern and the non-native suffixes could only become productive in English after a sufficiently large number of derivationally related pairs of words had been borrowed and the speakers of English could establish a formal-semantic relationship between these pairs. The patterns could then be extended to the formation of new words and thus become productive. The dual-stratum system that is characteristic for English (native vs. non-native) is therefore not only evidenced in the vocabulary and the etymology of morphological elements, but also in the typological pattern of English word-formation. Suprasegmental and segmental alternations as well as purely morphologically conditioned alternations are all features of non-native derivation (see Kastovsky 2006a: 160). However, the question of the morphological type is not entirely an etymological, but rather a structural one, since originally non-native lexemes may have been nativized and thus integrated into the native pattern of derivation. Therefore, word-formation on a non-native basis may both be word-based and stem-based. Including the so-called “combining forms”, which consist of bound lexical bases, one may distinguish four different structural types of derivational morphology in PDE:

238 The typological change of English word-formation Structural Types of PDE Derivational Morphology (based on Kastovsky 2006a: 159) a. Native (word-based)

deal – deal-er; un-learn-ed

b. Non-native (word-based) c. Non-native (stem-based)

de’limit – delimit-‘ation (with stress shift) horr-: horr-or, horr-ible, qual-: qual-ity, qual-ify tele-gram, bio-logy, con-ceive.

d. Non-native (combining forms)

The formation of two lexical strata in the English lexicon entailed the formation of two morphological types: a native, exclusively word-based one and a non-native, partly stem-based, partly word-based one. The existence of base-alternations in non-native morphology is determined by the prosodic structure of the donor languages: while the Germanic languages assign stress from left to right and stress the first syllable of lexical roots, in the Romance languages stress is assigned from right to left under consideration of syllable weight. Depending on the distribution of syllable weight, stress may fall on the final, the penultimate, or the antepenultimate syllable (Giegerich 1999). Also, suffixes may carry stress themselves or may induce a shift of the stress pattern of their bases. This shift of stress in turn affects the quality of those vowels that are originally stressed and which become unstressed after suffixation (e.g. diploma – diplomacy), which leads to phonologically conditioned alternation of the base form. Further instances of alternation of the base form occur as the consequence of shortening processes, such as velar softening and trisyllabic laxing (sane /ei/ - sanity /æ/), which are related to the number of syllables which the derived word consists of. Finally, non-native affixes may be subject to variation as well (consider the allomorphic variants of in- [il-, ir-, im-] or -ion [-ation, -tion, sion]), i.e. they create fusion at the morpheme boundary. With some non-native suffixes, both the word-based and the stem-based type may be in competition in PDE, e.g. in the case of -able, -al and -ic. The word-based type is regularly found in combinations with native bases, which always have the status of words, as in understand-able. Combinations with non-native lexical bases may be either stem-based or wordbased: -able -al -ic

word-based question-able refus-al Iceland-ic

stem-based memor-able societ-al fantast-ic.

Summary 239

7. Summary In this chapter two indicators for a shift of the encoding strategy of lexical information in English from syntheticity (fusional type) towards analyticity (isolation) were discussed: the loss of morphological material (suffixes), and the change of the status of lexical basea. The first development is a quantitative change and can be measured empirically, the latter one is a qualitative change that requires the historical reconstruction of the structure of words. Both are indicative of a shift of English word-formation towards more isolating encoding techniques of lexical information. The reductions in the use of bound morphemes did not occur in isolation, but were accompanied by a major structural change, namely the one from stem-based to word-based morphology and towards invariant base forms. The history of English shows that these two developments seem to have occurred in parallel, but more cross-linguistic evidence is needed to understand the relation between the shift towards word-based morphology and isolating expression techniques of categorical information in both grammar and the lexicon. With respect to the three criteria suggested by Reformatskij (1965), which were used as a definition of fusion (lexical stems do not occur without affixes, lexical stems undergo formal changes, affixes have allomorphic variants), we may conclude that English changed from a language for which at least the first two of these features were positive towards a language for which all of them are negative. Lexical bases may occur without affixes (since they have the status of words), they do not undergo formal changes, and native affixes have no alternant forms.70 Any instances of fusion at the morpheme boundary were lost since base forms and affixes are isolated entities in English. Thus, if affixation takes place in English word-formation on a native basis the output is a combination of two invariant morphemes.

Chapter 12 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective

1. Introduction It has been shown that the developments in the English lexicon, i.e. the basic quantitative and qualitative changes, contributed to the shift of English from a predominantly synthetic towards a predominantly analytic language. This suggests that the changes in English inflection were accompanied by changes in derivation, which both drifted into the same direction. The quantitative changes surfaced in the loss of morphological material that was used to indicate categorical information, which was considerable in both components of English. With respect to qualitative changes, it was shown that the change of the status of lexical bases from roots to stems and eventually to words led to the isolation of morpheme boundaries, which had an effect on both inflection and derivation since the input for morphological operations became an invariant base form. Thus, the status of morphological marking changed from an obligatory process towards an optional one. Categorial information tends to be indicated not on the lexeme, allowing for formal modifications of the base, but outside, by means of independent invariant morphemes. The use of bound morphology became restricted to a few specific grammatical and lexical contexts. Considering the results of the present study it should have become clear that there is little reason to maintain the view that inflectional morphology underwent a different historical development than derivational morphology from a formal point of view. However, this does not call into question the functional differences existing between inflection and derivation. Although in both cases the use of bound morphemes is motivated by the marking of categorical information, the type of information and its significance for the syntactic environment of the lexical base differ fundamentally. The goal of this chapter is to relate the common development of English inflection and derivation to the functional differences that exist between both components.

The classical distinction between inflection and derivation 241

2. The classical distinction between inflection and derivation The distinction between inflection and derivation is based on a set of “diagnostics”, i.e. test items that are supposed to make the classification of morphemes into either inflectional or derivational ones explicit. The most general criterion used to distinguish between both components is based on the idea that derivation is a process by which language users create a new word with a new meaning, whereas inflection is the obligatory indication of grammatical information relevant for a particular word-class. Table 66 lists the prototypical properties of inflectional and derivational processes, as discussed by Bybee (1985), Anderson (1992), Plank (1994), and Booij (2006): Table 66. Propererties of inflection and derivation

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Inflection

Derivation

obligatory regular application paradigmatic relevant for syntax irrelevant for meaning of the base no change of word-class consistent meaning position: outside derivation forms a complete word

optional irregular (gaps) not paradigmatic irrelevant for syntax changes the meaning of the base may change word-class often idiosyncrasy, lexicalization position: inside inflection forms a stem that takes inflections

Typical inflectional categories are Case, Gender, Number or verbal Aspect and Tense, many of which involve agreement within a phrase or on clausal level. Typical derivational processes are nominalizations, the formation of verbs and adjectives, or the indication of lexical categories like Diminutivity. (1) and (2) are probably the most important criteria for the definition of a distinction between inflection and derivation: the marking of inflectional categories is obligatory, whereas marking derivational categories is a choice made by speakers for purely semantic reasons. Inflectional morphemes apply regularly to all members of a given syntactic category and obligatorily appear every time a stem is used in a particular morphosyntactic context that requires morphological expression (Bybee 1985: 27). The obligatoriness of inflection is related to the obligatoriness of the category they indicate, which forces certain choices upon the speaker: in a lan-

242 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective guage with morphological case, each NP must be marked for case. Since the use of derivational morphemes is not obligatory, each derivative could theoretically be replaced by a simple morpheme without producing a change of the grammatical construction. Such a substitution process is not possible with word-forms containing an inflectional ending. Furthermore, derivational morphemes are much more often subjected to restrictions of their applicability than inflectional morphemes. In spite of the apparently clear-cut distinction between these two morphological domains in a language, none of the properties in Table 66 is defining by itself. Exceptions can easily be found for each of the criteria, and often individual affixes may be found to serve in both domains. Inflectional paradigms are, for instance, often defective. Many nouns lack plural forms (singuralis tantum), others lack singular forms (pluralis tantum). In some languages the marking of Person with verbs is defective, as in Russian, where about 100 verbs lack a first person singular (Halle 1973). In other languages, the marking of case is irregular, as in Modern German where in some contexts an expected accusative singular/plural marker is not realized morphologically, but blocked (Gallmann 1996). Another example is the traditional assumption that inflection is not word-class changing, as defended by e.g. Anderson (1992) or Bauer (1988), which has been rejected by various authors (Booij 1997: 156, Haspelmath 1996: 43, van Marle 1996). In some cases inflection may have effects on the syntactic category of the base, thus having derivational status. Frequently cited examples are participle forms, which may be used as adjectives (e.g. in OE, PDE, German, Dutch), or infinitives, which may the used as nouns (e.g. in Dutch, German, Spanish). Inflections may fulfil derivational functions also in those cases where the assignment of semantic case has an effect on the meaning of the base word. Idiomized inflection is a common phenomenon in inflecting languages, which may be taken as an argument against an unexceptional semantic regularity of inflection. The Russian Instrumental, for instance, indicates Means, Agents, and Manner. However, if the noun refers to a time period, it indicates Punctuality: utr-om ‘in the morning’, dn-em ‘at daytime’, vecher-om ‘in the evening’, noch-ju ‘at night’. Moreover, languages differ with respect to the applicability of the terms inflection and derivation: in languages where most grammatical marking is optional it is difficult to draw the line between the two domains (Aikhenvald 2007: 36).

The inflection-derivation continuum 243 3.

The inflection-derivation continuum

A binary opposition of inflection and derivation would suggest that affixes and thus the categories which affixes indicate are complementary and that a clear-cut classification of affixes as either inflectional or derivational is possible. However, most of the recent approaches reject such a strict separation of morphology, due to the existence of a number of categories that show properties of both inflection and derivation. Number, for instance, fulfils a morphosyntactic function in that it triggers agreement of the verb, but it also exhibits lexical functions, because the use of a plural marker itself is not necessarily determined by the syntactic context, but required in the semantic context ‘more than one’ and thus usually a choice of the speaker. Furthermore, the application of plural markers is not general, i.e. they do not attach to all members of the syntactic category ‘noun’, and nouns marked for plurality may develop idiosyncratic meanings, i.e. they may undergo a lexical split from the base form, which is usually considered to be a property of derivation only (e.g. cloth – clothes, people – peoples). Another example is the verbal category Tense, whose use is also not strictly syntactically conditioned, but determined by extra-linguistic temporal coordinates. Furthermore, tense-marked forms may serve as input for wordformation processes, e.g. when participle forms become the base for suffixation processes (e.g. drunkenness). The existence of such borderline cases suggests that the relation between inflection and derivation should be conceived of as a continuum on which morphological categories are arranged between two poles with various intermediate stages between them. The first to explicitly propose such a model was Bybee (1985). The advantage of this approach is that affixes may be located on different points of this continuum, some being closer to the inflectional pole, thus indicating categories which are more relational and thus relevant for syntactic operations, others being closer to the derivational end, thus expressing predominantly lexical content without causing any change of the syntactic configuration. The continuum accounts for the observation that both inflectional and derivational properties may be present in the meaning and function of a given morphological exponent. The position of affixes on the continuum depends on the predominance of either morphosyntactic or lexical content and their relevance for syntactic processes. The idea of the continuum is supported by the observation that particular types of categorical information can be expressed either inflectionally or

244 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective derivationally in different languages. Thus, for instance, the diminutive is an inflectional category in Fula (Anderson 1985), but a derivational one in most of the IE languages. Tense is an inflectional category in the IE languages and Fula, but a derivational one in Kwakiutl (Anderson 1985). Within the domain of verbal aspect, some aspectual notions such as telicity, semelfactivity, or static vs. active meaning of inceptivity may be expressed lexically or grammatically in different languages (Bybee 1985: 101).71 Another indicator for the fact that the same meaning can be expressed either by means of inflections or by means of derivational morphemes is the observation that some inflectional categories exhibit close overlaps with derivational ones, as Kuryowicz (1964) argues: Aktionsart is related to inflectional aspect, collectivity as a derivational category is related to the inflectional category plural, and semantic gender with nouns is closely related to inflectional gender with adjectives. Bybee (1985: 98) suggests that it is the content of a morphological category which determines whether it is inflectional or derivational in character. Referring to nouns, a category has a derivational expression if it modifies inherent characteristics of the referent. It is, however, inflectional when it signals the relation of the noun to other constituents in the sentence or discourse. The effect of a morphological category on the semantic content of a word has been termed the Principle of Relevance by Bybee: the higher the extent to which a category affects the meaning of the base, the more derivational it is. In other words, the bigger the semantic difference between a base and its derivative, the more lexical and thus the more derivational a category is. This iconic principle also determines the position of affixes: since derivational affixes are more relevant for the semantic content of a lexeme they are closer to lexical bases than inflectional ones. In the case of inflection, a semantic difference between a base and an inflected form is usually absent, i.e. purely inflectional categories have no effect on the meaning of the base form. The lack of relevance for the meaning of a lexical base determines their position: inflectional markers occur at the end of lexical bases, outside derivational morphology, and are thus closer to the syntactic environment of a word. The second principle that determines the classification of a category and thus its exponents as either inflectional or derivational in Bybee’s framework is the Principle of Generality: in those cases where a similar conceptual content is expressed either derivationally or inflectionally “we will find that the inflectional expression requires a fully general meaning, while the derivational does not.” (Bybee 1985: 99) Thus, the meaning of an inflec-

The inflection-derivation continuum 245

tional category is always general and predictable, whereas that of derivational categories is specific and often produces idiosyncratic meanings. Applying these ideas to an abstract model that accounts for the difference between inflection and derivation, the two end points of a continuum may be defined as indicated in Figure 22. Syntax Inflection Meaning: Function:

general relational

Lexicon |

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

Derivation specific lexical

Figure 22. Definition of the extreme ends of the inflection-derivation continuum

This rough definition of the end points of the scale facilitates the classification of suffixes and will be useful for a definition of the nature of the relation holding between inflectional and derivational morphemes. Thus, the more general the meaning of a suffix and the more relational its function, the more inflectional it is. This, in turn, means that the more specific the semantic content of a suffix and the more relevant it is for the meaning of the base, the more derivational it is. Booij (1996) elaborated on the idea of the existence of intermediate stages between inflection and derivation and suggested a distinction between two different types of inflection, namely contextual inflection and inherent inflection. The distinction is based on the observation that in a number of languages categories like Number, Tense or Degree of comparison, which are traditionally conceived of as belonging to inflection, may be semantically idiosyncratic and feed both derivation and compounding. These categories are more general in meaning than prototypical derivational categories and exhibit a higher degree of semantic predictability. Furthermore, they have syntactic consequences, which is why they are usually not classified as derivational. However, their use is not strictly determined by syntactic rules. In order to separate such categories and their markers from prototypical inflectional categories, on the one hand, and from prototypical derivational ones, on the other hand, Booij (1996) introduced the category of inherent inflection. Integrating this idea into the continuum sketched above, the relation between inflection and derivation can be illustrated in Figure 23.

246 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective The term contextual inflection refers to those categories whose marking is required by the syntactic context in which a word occurs. This holds for all agreement categories and for structural case with nouns. Inherent inflection is a type of inflection that is not triggered by the syntactic context. Examples are, as mentioned above, number with nouns, the degrees of comparison with adjectives, or tense and aspect with verbs, which all contribute a semantic component and are therefore often a choice of the speaker rather than an obligatory element. Inherent inflection is, in principle, closer to derivation than to contextual inflection because of (1) its lack of universal applicability (e.g. many nouns do not have two number forms, such as mass nouns, collective nouns, diseases) and (2) semantic irregularities with words containing an inherent inflection (e.g. OE eld-er meant ‘older’ and ‘parents’). The latter aspect illustrates that inherent inflection is more susceptible to lexicalization than contextual inflection. An example are plural forms that do not allow for the interpretation ‘more than one instance of X’, but which involve a semantic change in the sense that they denote an entire category or ‘type of X’: GER PDE DUT

Bier English groent

Bier-e English-es groent-en

‘types of beer’ ‘types of English/varieties’ ‘types of vegetables’

Such instances of pluralization lead to a semantic recategorization of nouns rather than the mere indication of a rise in quantity. Therefore, its use must be lexically determined. This idea is supported by van Marle (1996): plural markers have inflectional properties because they trigger concord with depending elements. However, they also display properties of derivation because they are not used automatically in specific contexts, they are not obligatory, and they do not apply to all members of the syntactic category noun (no generality). Another example is the German genitive singular ending -(e)s, which is used after quantifiers and thus occurs automatically in a particular syntactic environment, creating word-forms of the same lexeme, but not new words: etwas Schönes viel Gutes wenig Neues

‘something nice/beautiful’ ‘much good’ ‘few new things’

On the one hand, the process is automatic, exceptionless, and determined by the syntactic context, here the presence of a quantifier that precedes the

The inflection-derivation continuum 247

adjective. This should result in a classification of -(e)s as an inflection. However, the resulting forms are noun-like since it is usually nouns and not adjectives that are used in the position following these quantifiers, e.g. etwas Geld ‘some money’, viel Gerede ‘much talk/gossip’, wenig Platz ‘little room’. This suggests that -(e)s exhibits derivational properties as well. Other examples for the similarity of particular inflectional categories with derivation are present participle and past participle forms, which may develop idiosyncratic meanings and even assign nominal or adjectival properties to the verbal base: Present Participles: OE feoht-an ‘to fight’ – feoht-end ‘fighter’ GER ras-en ‘to hurry’ – ras-end ‘angry’ Past Participles:

V V

N A

OE lær-an ‘to teach’ – ge/lær-ed ‘learned ps’ V GER lern-en ‘to learn’ – ge-lern-t ‘learned’ V

N A

Also infinitives may exhibit nominal properties when preceded by determiners, as e.g. in German or Spanish: Infinitives

GER Das Anbringen von Werbung ist verboten. ‘Putting on advertisement is forbidden.’ SPA Me gusta el cantar de los gitanos. ‘I like the singing of the gypsies.’

These examples show that inherent inflections may create new lexical items by changing the word-class and/or the meaning of the base, which is untypical for inflections. Thus, categories which are traditionally considered as inflectional behave like derivational categories in that they may be semantically idiosyncratic and/or allow for a change of the word-class of the base form. Moreover, certain types of inflection may feed compounding and derivation (cf. Booij 1996: 6), i.e. word-forms that are equipped with an inherent inflection may serve as input for word-formation, which is usually not the case with words bearing a contextual inflection. One example are plural nouns in German, which may be the input for compounds: Studenten-werk ‘student association’, Ä-rzt-e-kammer ‘association of doctors’, Bü-ch-er-regal ‘book shelf’. As Booij argues, the plural forms involved here should not be interpreted as linking elements or instances of base allomorphy since the plural determinants of these compounds have a collective meaning. Another example are participle forms, which may take further derivational affixes (e.g. German Auszubild-end-er ‘apprentice’, Lehr-ender ‘one who teaches’).

248 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective The properties of the two types of inflection and derivation can be summarized as shown in Figure 23. Syntax Contextual inflection (1) universally applicable (2) general use (3) semantically regular (4) general in meaning

Lexicon Inherent inflection less universally applicable less general use more idiosyncratic more specific

Derivation not universally applicable no general use idiosyncratic highly specific in meaning

Figure 23. Definition of the two types of inflection and derivation

The criterion of applicability (1) refers to the degree to which a certain category applies to members of a particular syntactic class. The lower the general applicability of a category, the more derivational in character it is. Thus, Number does not apply to all nouns as some nouns do not have plural forms, and others have no singulars. Likewise, not all adjectives may take different degrees of comparison (e.g. adjectives denoting an absolute quality, such as dead, married). Structural case or agreement, on the other hand, apply to all nouns and adjectives in inflecting languages. Generality (2) refers to the question of whether the use of a marker is obligatory, i.e. determined by the context, or whether it depends on the choice of the speaker. The presence of a plural marker or the use of tense with verbs, for instance, are not dictated by syntax, which brings such categories closer to the derivational end of the continuum. With respect to semantic criteria (3), inherent inflection tends to be more susceptible to lexicalization than contextual inflection, whose meaning contribution is always predictable. Specifity in meaning (4) refers to the observation that derivational meaning is more specific than inflectional meaning, which is also a criterion for the distinction between inflection and derivation used by Bybee (1985) (see above). The greater specifity in meaning restricts the applicability of derivational affixes. The advantage of the threefold distinction of morphological domains is that it accounts for the differences that often exist between inflectional endings: some share a number of properties with derivation and thus add a more lexical content, whereas others do not affect the meaning of the base, but indicate relational meaning only. The approach was taken up and elabo-

The inflection-derivation continuum 249

rated by other authors. Van Marle (1996), for instance, argued in favor of a unity of morphology and the “interwovenness of the derivational and inflectional dimension of the word”, as his article is titled. Based on Anderson’s (1992) claim that “inflection is what is relevant to syntax”, van Marle suggests that the relevance of an affix for the syntactic configuration is a more decisive criterion for the distinction between inflections and derivational affixes than obligatoriness. Contextual inflections are compulsory and directly commanded by syntax, whereas inherent inflections are not dictated by sentence structure since they have an independent semantic content. Nevertheless, also inherent inflections demand a specific syntactic context. Thus, e.g. nominal plural markers trigger agreement of the constituents of the same phrase and a verb inflection for plural. They are more independent from syntax in their use and thus derivation-like, but nevertheless participate in the syntactic configuration a word occurs in. This line of reasoning implies two different types of oppositions. On the one hand, contextual inflection is different from both inherent inflection and derivation since its use is obligatory, i.e. it is determined by structural requirements, and since it signals the relation of a lexical unit to other constituents in the sentence. The use of inherent inflection and derivation, however, is not strictly syntactically determined, and both have an effect on the inherent qualities of the lexical base they are attached to, i.e. they contribute semantic information. On the other hand, both contextual and inherent inflection are opposed to derivation since both play a role in the syntactic configuration they are part of, i.e. both types of inflection have a syntactic effect, whereas derivational processes do not influence the syntactic environment of a lexical base. The two types of opposition are illustrated in Figure 24. It should be noted that the term “inflection” in the label inherent inflection may be misleading since it is not only inflectional morphemes which may fulfill or adopt derivation-like functions: derivational affixes may also have or develop inflection-like properties and therefore occupy this position in-between both ends of the continuum. One example for such a type of derivational affix is, for instance, the Dutch feminine noun suffix with inhabitatives -se, as in Zij is een echte Amsterdam-se. ‘She is a real Amsterdamer (fem).’ The case is discussed by Van Marle (1996), who states that this type of suffix is involved in sex-concord and thus influences syntactic structure, as the example above shows: the adjective echt ‘real’ is inflected for the feminine singular, and the personal pronoun is feminine zij instead of hij ‘he’ or het ‘it’. Thus, -se is a derivational affix that plays a role in the

250 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective syntactic configuration by determining the morphological form of related constituents and thus exhibits inflection-like properties. For a conception of inflectional and derivational morphology as a continuum this means that a derivational affix like -se should be intermediate between contextual inflection and derivation and thus be classified as inherent inflection. Syntax

Lexicon

Contextual Inflection

Inherent Inflection

Derivation

Syntactic dimension: play a role in syntactic configuration

No syntactic dimension: their occurrence is unrelated to syntactic requirements Figure 24. The relation between the two types of inflection and derivation

Further evidence for the theoretical conception of the relation between inflection and derivation as one consisting of prototypical end points on a scale with various intermediate stages comes from Haspelmath (1996). The author discussed instances of inherent inflections, i.e. inflectional morphology which is word-class changing and thus more derivational in character than those inflections which are not transpositional. However, he does use the term inherent inflection, but speaks of transpositional inflections, i.e. inflections which may change the word-class of the base. Examples are participle endings, which may convert a verb into an adjective, or the Turkish adverbial marker -ki, which may transpose an adverb into an adjective: GER:

TUR:

der lachende Bauer der lach- -end the laugh pres.part. imdi-ki kriz imdi -ki now ADJ

-e NOM.sg.weak

kriz crisis

Bauer peasant

(Haspelmath 1996: 46)

One may add the English progressive form in -ing here, which may transpose a verb into a noun or an element that fulfils noun-like functions while at the same time preserving verbal properties, as with gerunds (e.g. Fishing is fun). In these cases, the word class is changed since morphologically and

The inflection-derivation continuum 251

syntactically the derivatives behave like members of the derived word class. Since the new words are formed by means of highly productive rules and the process is relevant to syntax, due to the different syntactic behavior of the inflected item, the examples above should be analyzed as instances of inflection with derivation-like properties. A closer look, however, reveals that the new word forms do not entirely give up all the properties of the syntactic category of the base: the German participle form, for instance, retains properties of the verb as it may be modified by adverbials of manner or location (e.g. der laut in der Scheune lachende Bauer. ‘The farmer who is laughing loudly in his barn.’). Thus, Haspelmath (1996: 48) distinguishes between internal and external syntax: words equipped with an inflectional marker that changed their word-class exhibit properties of the lexical base inside the phrase they govern, and properties of the derived word-class with respect to other syntactic elements. In other words, such affixed wordforms represent two sets of word-class properties, which suggests a distinction of two layers of word-class features: one layer being the word-level, where the derivative retains the properties of the original word-class of the base word for internal purposes, and a phrase level, where a set of properties of the new, derived word-class is adopted for external purposes. In the case of the German participle form, the new form would have to be represented as follows: [[V]A] V | lach

Asuff | -end

Figure 25. The two layers of word-class features (based on Haspelmath 1996)

Such a representation implies that it is not only the features of the head which percolate, but also those of the non-head, e.g. the suffix. Within a syntactic context, Haspelmath (1996) suggests that the head noun modified by the participial adjective “sees” only the external part of the word form, i.e. A, whereas the phrase-internal constituents of the participle, i.e. the depending elements, “see” only the internal part, which is V. Thus, words derived by inherent inflections tend to preserve their internal syntactic features, which classifies the suffixes as inflectional, but they alter the external syntax on the phrase level by changing the word class, which renders these inflections derivation-like.

252 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective To conclude, inflection and derivation overlap at a point which may be termed “inherent inflection”, which is an intermediate point on a continuum ranging from one pole, ‘inflection’, to another, ‘derivation’. The continuum illustrates than inflection and derivation do not form discrete, separated components, but are connected through a transition zone where syntax and morphology overlap. Such overlaps are certainly not the normal state of affairs, but they occur rather frequently. They show that, on the one hand, inflection and derivation operate separately, which justifies the distinction, but that, on the other hand, they may co-occur with a particular set of markers that represent both properties, thus moving on a scale ranging from higher or lower degrees of regularity, generality and productivity. Thus, the postulation of a ‘split morphology’ (Perlmutter 1988) is inadequate to describe the relation between both components, as it requires a strict classification of categories and the affixes representing them as either inflectional or derivational. Such a distinction can be applied to some proto-typical instances of inflection or derivation, but it leaves a large number of borderline cases unaccounted. 4. Inflection, derivation and the loss of morphological markers What remains to be explained in the context of the present study is the way in which the idea of an inflection-derivation continuum may be related to the historical development of noun suffixes and that of bound morphemes in general in English. Important questions in this respect relate to the factors that determine the loss of inflectional and derivational suffixes or their survival, respectively, and the question of why more affixes were preserved in the derivational component of English than in the inflectional one. The present study has shown that in the history of English, more precisely during the OE and early ME periods, morphological markers were lost not only on the left edge of the continuum, i.e. in the inflectional domain, but also on the right edge, i.e. in derivation. The loss of inflections was almost complete in English, with only two markers being preserved from the OE system of nominal inflection (plural -s, which goes back to the OE nominative plural a-stem marker -as, and the possessive marker -s, which originates from the OE genitive singular inflection -es for a-stems and i-stems). This phenomenon contrasts with the larger number of suffixes that was retained in the derivational component of the language, some of which are still productive in PDE, namely -er (> -ERE), -hood (> -HAD),

Inflection, derivation and the loss of morphological markers 253

-ling (> -LING), -ness (> -NESS), -ship (> -SCIPE), -dom (> -DOM) and -ing (> -UNG). However, considering the fact that OE had 15 different, more or less frequently occurring noun suffixes (excluding the zero-suffix and END, which is analyzed as inherent inflection here), a reduction to eight productive markers in early ME (five of which derived nouns of the category Abstract exclusively) and six in late ME (-D >-th became unproductive, -LAC was lost) is a remarkable development. Table 67 represents a survey of all OE noun suffixes, classified according to the categories suggested by Booij (1996). Table 67. Contextual inflections, inherent inflections, and derivational suffixes in OE and early ME

(1) OE inventory (2) lost (3) preserved in ME1/ fossilized (4) preserved in ME1/ used in new words

Contextual inflections

Inherent inflections

Derivational suffixes

8 5 1

3 1 1

15 4 3

0 (2)

1 +2 +1

8 (+1)

The OE inventory of bound morphemes consisted of eight contextual inflections (-a, -an, -as, -e, -es, -ena, -u, -um), three inherent ones (-end, -en, -ed), and 15 derivational suffixes, zero excluded. In ME at the latest, five contextual inflections (-a, -an, -ena, -u, -um), one inherent inflection (-end) and four derivational suffixes (-ÆRN, -ESTRE, -OR, -RÆDEN) were lost. Some morphemes were preserved, but occurred in fossilized word-forms only. One of them is the contextual inflection -e, which in some paradigms marked all four cases (thus facilitating its reinterpretation as part of the lexical base) and whose presence or absence was primarily governed by metrical-stylistic requirements (Lass 1992: 110) and thus not a syntactic requirement. Others are the inherent inflection -en (marker of participles) and the derivational suffixes -EL, -EN and -ING. Two of the former contextual inflections, namely the nominative plural -as and the genitive singular -es (both strong nouns) survived, but changed their status and became inherent inflections as they did not represent a fusion of a specific case/number combination any more, but categories whose marking is not

254 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective strictly governed by syntactic requirements (Number and specific functions of the former genitive, such as possession or the partititve). Thus, these suffixes underwent a functional reduction and their use came to be subjected to a set of restrictions. Moreover, their meaning is not purely grammatical, but also has a semantic value, referring to the quantity of an entity and to possession, respectively. Note that the ME plural marker -s alternated with -en in OE and early ME, -en being the nominative/accusative plural marker of weak nouns ( OE -RÆDEN) in hatred (lexical base: hate), or the noun suffix -el in treadle (lexical base: tread). In both cases the meaning of the suffixes is certainly unknown to most of the speakers of English: -red (OE -ræden) was used to indicate the category Abstract, -le (OE -el) was an indicator of

The loss of bound morphemes in derivation and inflection 257

the category Object, usually an instrument, in OE. As the data have shown, the suffixes have not been used for the derivation of these types of nouns since the early ME period. However, from a formal perspective the combinations are still transparent since the base verbs are recoverable and still in use in both languages and since the derivatives do not exhibit stem alternation. The semantic transparency of the combinations is certainly debatable, but it cannot be excluded that the nouns are still compositional for some speakers since the base verbs can be plausibly related to the noun. These extreme cases illustrate that suffixes which have not been used for new combinations for centuries may, at least to some degree, be preserved in transparent word-forms, which is why they can, theoretically, not simply be excluded from an analysis of the inventory of derivational suffixes. Other examples in English are -th, the denominal suffix -ing, or -by, which are all listed by Marchand (1969). Including them into the list of derivational affixes available in a language at a given point in time makes the inventory of suffixes used for specific processes, e.g. nominalizations, appear much more diverse than a documentation of the actual use of these suffixes would justify. Many of the suffixes that occur in fossilized wordforms are not re-activated in a later period: the English noun suffix -el, for instance, has not been used for new coinages since about 1500, and ceased to be used for deverbal formations with the meaning ‘instrument’ already about 1400 (Marchand 1969: 324). In this sense, a true account of suffixes in English should list only those suffixes which are actually used for the derivation of new word-forms in a particular period. This procedure would reduce the list of material available for new creations tremendously. However, as stated above, productivity is subjected to periodical changes, i.e. a suffix that seems to be unproductive in one period may be re-activated in another one if it continues to exist in transparent word-forms. Thus, in some cases the presence of some few transparent word-forms with an otherwise unproductive suffix may induce the creation of new word-forms by analogy. The suffix -th, for instance, gave rise to formations like growth (1557) and width (1627) (Marchand 1969: 349), although it is usually claimed to have been dead by late ME at the latest. Fossilized forms may also be intransparent, which is the case when morphological segmentation is not possible, due to three developments. First, phonological processes related to a given suffixation process may become unproductive, e.g. umlaut, which was caused by the attachment of a suffix containing /i/ in Germanic (e.g. lang – *lang-iu > leng). In those cases, the base exhibits a type of alternation that is unpredictable in a later

258 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective period and isolates the derivative from the lexical base. Secondly, the constituents of a once complex word-form may have fused phonologically into a single unit, by which no segmentation is possible any more in a later period. In other words, phonological changes, e.g. general sound changes (Great Vowel Shift), shortening processes, insertion of intrusive consonants (e.g. OE spinnan ‘to spin’ – spinel > PDE spindle), contractions or syncope of final vowels and consonants may change the form of a word to such an extent that the single constituents it was originally composed of fused into an inseparable unit. Thereby, any trace of former complexity became obscured. Thirdly, the lexical base may have been lost over time so that the derivative is an isolated unit and therefore comes to be interpreted as a noncomplex unit (e.g. PDE swivel, from OE sw!fan ‘to move, wend’, where the verb is lost). In some cases the lexical base was preserved, but it acquired a different meaning and may thus not be plausibly related to the derivative, above all when the meaning of the suffix became obscured as well. Thus, a noun like riddle (> OE rædels) cannot be related to the underlying base verb read (> OE rædan ‘to counsel, give advice, to read/explain a riddle’) in PDE, above all since the verb acquired a different meaning than the one it had in OE, now referring to any process of looking at some written text. The classification of word-forms that include an unproductive suffix can be summarized as presented in Table 68. To conclude, the preservation of suffixes in transparent word-forms over a longer or shorter period of time makes the inventory of suffixes appear larger than it would be justified in view of the actual use of this material for new formations. This phenomenon is untypical for the inflectional domain. The preservation of single inflectional morphemes or inflected word-forms is not uncommon, but occurs much less frequently than the preservation of affixes in the derivational domain. In cases where inflections or inflected forms are preserved they either have no functional value at all and are interpreted as part of the word, as in therefore, which originally was a combination of the DAT sg form of the OE demonstrative pronoun neuter æt, namely ære, and the preposition fore, thus meaning ‘that for/for that’, or they are “irregular” forms, a term that implies their synchronic status as fossilized remnants of a once productive rule. Examples are the fossilization of the OE -en plural in oxen, brethren, or the DAT sg marker -m in whom ( -DOM ‘abstract state’, as in frod#m, w!sd#m). Thus, an integration of new affixes occurs more “rapidly” in the derivational domain than in the inflectional one. To sum up, a complete emptying of the inventory of inflections is not unusual when inflections loose their functional value whereas it is less likely to occur in the derivational domain, due to the preservation of derivational elements in fossilized word-forms (of which some remain transparent) and the constant renewal of the inventory. However, it should be pointed out that a complete loss of inflections as the consequence of a typological shift is not always the rule, as is shown by impoverished case systems in several languages, e.g. Rumanian (see Hall 1980; Iordan, Gutu Romalo and Niculescu 1967).

5.2. The survival of seven derivational suffixes As discussed above, seven out of the seventeen OE noun suffixes were preserved in late ME: -DOM, -ERE, -HAD, -ING (< -UNG), -LING, -NESS, SCIPE. At this point the question arises why it is exactly these seven suffixes that survived from OE into ME and even into PDE as productive means of deriving new nouns. It will be suggested here that the loss of suffixes is entirely unrelated to any inherent property of the suffixes as the change is determined by language systemic factors, not by specific characteristics of single suffixes.

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The discussion of the change of the morphological type of English in general (from stem- to word-based morphology and thus towards a higher degree of isolation) has shown that the shift from predominantly synthetic to predominantly analytic strategies of encoding categorical information is the result of a number of individual changes that occurred on different linguistic levels, accumulated over time and induced a general change of the structural type of a language as a whole. In the case of English, the individual changes occurred in phonology (shift towards main stress on the initial syllable, loss of final nasals, High Vowel Deletion, leveling of final unstressed vowels), morphology (reanalysis of stem-formatives as suffixes or inflectional endings or part of the stem, shift from stem- to word-based morphology and from base-variant to base-invariant morphology) and syntax (regular SVO order as the standard pattern in main and subordinate clauses; loss of V2 structures). These changes, which are related, but occurred independently of each other, came to interact with each other and continuously expanded over the entire language, by which a general typological change of the langugage, which was directional, but not teleological, was induced. The loss or preservation of suffixes as indicators of categorical information should therefore not be related to inherent properties of single suffixes: the decision whether a category is marked by means of bound morphemes or by means of autonomous elements depends on the general strategy used in a language to encode categorical information (fusion, isolation or agglutination), and, probably, also on the status of base forms (stems or words). The phonological shape of single suffixes, e.g. phonological distinctiveness, the ability of creating unpredictable phonological junctures on the morpheme boundary, or phonological substance in general (shorter vs. longer suffixes) are unlikely to be the driving force behind the preservation or the loss of the synthetic expression of particular categories. Evidence for this assumption comes from the observation that the suffixes which were preserved in English do not exhibit similarities with respect to these criteria. One might, for instance, be tempted to conclude that suffixes with an initial consonant were more likely to remain productive than those with initial vocalic sound since they created unpredictable phonological junctures at the morpheme boundary and were thus more likely to be parsed out (following the argumentation in Hay [2003] and Hay and Baayen [2005]). A suffix like -NESS, for instance, produced consonant clusters that were otherwise not found in the final position of words and/or generally not admitted, e.g. anweardnesse (/rdn/) or æteownesse (/wn/). However, -ERE (>-er) and -UNG (>-ing), which did not pro-

262 Derivation and inflection: A typological perspective duce unpredictable consonant clusters, were and still are two of the most productive noun suffixes in English, in spite of the initial vocalic sound, whereas suffixes like -RÆDEN or -LAC, which did take part in the formation of base-final consonant clusters, were lost. A more likely candidate for a criterion that determines the survival of suffixes is syllable length since most of the suffixes that were lost (-D, -EL, -EN, -OR) did not form a syllable on their own, but often consisted of one phoneme only, which may over time have made it more difficult to parse them out, thus facilitating their fusion with the lexical base. These suffixes induced a resyllabification of the lexical base and thus tended to merge phonologically with the base. A counterexample is -RÆDEN, which consists of two syllables and did not induce resyllabification, but nevertheless ceased to be used in ME. Table 69 illustrates in what way the features ‘consonant clustering’ and ‘syllable length’ make correct predictions on the development of English noun suffixes (“lost or unproductive” and “preserved or productive” refers to the use of suffixes in early ME). Table 69. The relation between two phonological properties of suffixes and productivity number of suffixes a) creating consonant clusters 8 not creating clusters 8 b) forming a syllable on their own 7 not forming a syllable 9

lost/ unproductive 3 6 2 7

preserved/ productive 5 2 5 2

The figures indicate that none of these features can be used to make reliable predictions on the loss of suffixes since the number of exceptions is rather high. One may only speak of tendencies: suffixes which tended to create consonant clusters and which formed a syllable on their own were more likely to be preserved than those for which these criteria did not hold. Note that there is a close relation between the two features: those suffixes which took part in the creation of consonant clusters and which also formed a syllable on their own survived into ME and PDE (-DOM, -HAD, -LING, -NESS, -SCIPE). Obviously, these two features support the parsing out of suffixes, which strengthens the use of the respective derivational pattern. However, -ERE and -ING (