Suffixation: The Old English Period of the English Language
1. SUFFIXATION IN OLD ENGLISH
1.1 The Old English Period Of The English Language
Like all divisions in history, periods of the English language are matters of convenience and the dividing lines between them purely arbitrary. For the sake of convenience we distinguish three main stages in the history of language, namely Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Modern English (MnE).
The first period, which lasted from 450 to 1100 (or 1150), and is known as Old English, is the period of full endings. During this period the inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb are preserved more or less unimpaired. This means that, in principle, any vowel may be found in the ending which is usually unstressed: [a, i, o, u, e].
Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendents. It is a West Germanic language and is closely related to Old Frisian. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin, and was much closer to modern German than modern English.
1.2 Suffixation
All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots and affixes. The latter in their turn fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word, as in re-read, and suffixes which are attached to the end of the root.
Suffixation was by far the most productive means of word derivation in Old English. Suffixes not only modified the lexical meaning of the word but could refer it to another part of speech. Suffixes were mostly applied in forming nouns and adjectives, seldom - in forming verbs. Etymologically OE suffixes can be traced to several sources: old stem-suffixes, which had lost their productivity, but could still be distinguished in some words as dead or non-productive suffixes; derivational suffixes proper inherited from PIE and PG; new suffixes which developed from root-morphemes in Late PG and OE in the course of morphological simplification of the word. The
1.1 The Old English Period Of The English Language
Like all divisions in history, periods of the English language are matters of convenience and the dividing lines between them purely arbitrary. For the sake of convenience we distinguish three main stages in the history of language, namely Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Modern English (MnE).
The first period, which lasted from 450 to 1100 (or 1150), and is known as Old English, is the period of full endings. During this period the inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb are preserved more or less unimpaired. This means that, in principle, any vowel may be found in the ending which is usually unstressed: [a, i, o, u, e].
Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendents. It is a West Germanic language and is closely related to Old Frisian. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin, and was much closer to modern German than modern English.
1.2 Suffixation
All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots and affixes. The latter in their turn fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word, as in re-read, and suffixes which are attached to the end of the root.
Suffixation was by far the most productive means of word derivation in Old English. Suffixes not only modified the lexical meaning of the word but could refer it to another part of speech. Suffixes were mostly applied in forming nouns and adjectives, seldom - in forming verbs. Etymologically OE suffixes can be traced to several sources: old stem-suffixes, which had lost their productivity, but could still be distinguished in some words as dead or non-productive suffixes; derivational suffixes proper inherited from PIE and PG; new suffixes which developed from root-morphemes in Late PG and OE in the course of morphological simplification of the word. The