An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

conversion process of present-day English, whereby a word is formed
without any overt affixation, for example desire

→
desire

, compare
love

~ love

and the Old English forms above.
It is not only nouns that can be formed by the above processes, for
adjectives too can be derived. Thus we find examples such as full ‘full’
from class 1 fyllan and go¯d ‘good’ from class 2 go¯dian ‘make better’. Note
that the class 1 examples show i-umlaut of the verb but not of the derived
adjective. This is the same phenomenon that occurs with the derivation
of nouns from class 1. Amongst other things this is good evidence
that the derivational process was very early, certainly before the time of
i-mutation.
The above account rather implies that there was not, in the earliest
stages of Old English, any derivation of new verbs from nouns or adjec-
tives. This is indeed largely, but not wholly, true. The only cases of new
verbs which have a certain derivational status are associated with class 2
weak verbs, where, for example, we find lufian ‘love’ from the older
noun lufu ‘love’. In Old English itself this becomes a very frequent type
of derivation, so that from wuldor ‘glory’ we find wuldrian ‘glorify’. This
can extend quite easily to words borrowed from Latin, so that we find
new verbs such as plantian ‘plant’ from the borrowed noun.
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8.3 Affixation
Affixation is by far the most frequent method for creating new vocabu-
lary in Old English. There is a very large number of both prefixes and
suffixes in the language, many of which are themselves very often used.
Within the limits of this book it is rather difficult to give a good im-
pression of the variety of affixation in use without descending into mere
lists. I shall, therefore, restrict my comments to the most frequent of
all the affixes, and to the principal features which mark out prefixes and
suffixes.
When considering prefixes there is one phonological issue which
needs to be addressed immediately. There is good evidence to suggest
that in early Germanic only nouns could be inseparably prefixed, whilst
with verbs the prefix could be separated from the verb. Then what
happened is that the stress came to be fixed on the first syllable which
could be the prefixed element. Whilst this was happening, the separable
verbal prefixes remained separable, and therefore did not receive the
fixed stress. Only at a later stage did the separable verbal prefixes become
inseparable, but then it was too late for the fixed stress to be moved.
The consequence of this variation is that we find sets of forms such as:
sácan

‘fight’ ~ ándsàca

‘enemy’ ~ onsácan
V
‘deny’. This variation may
have contributed to the contrast in present-day English between, for
example, récòrd

and recórd

. It may also be helpful to consider the dis-
tinctions in both Dutch and German between inseparable and separ-
able verbs. In both languages there is a major distinction between two
types of prefixed verbs. Firstly there are verbs where the prefix always
remains with the verbs, so that we find, for example, Ich habe die Antwort
vergessen ‘I have the answer forgotten’. But secondly there are verbs
where the prefix is separated in the same type of construction. In
that type we find ge- inserted between the prefix and the verb. Thus
we find Er ist zurückgekommen ‘He has back come’. In some instances
in Old English the difference in stress is made apparent by the shape
of the prefix, as can be seen in the examples of ándsàca and onsácan
above.
Amongst prefixes, the most common one, indeed the most common
of all affixes, is g
.
e-. This prefix, especially, but by no means only, when
prefixed to a past participle often seems to be empty of all semantic
meaning, and can become close to being an inflectional marker rather
than a prefix. When used as a true verbal prefix, its meaning is most often
close to perfectivity, result or completion, as in g
.
eascian ‘learn by asking’.
It can also be used as a nominal prefix, as in g
.
efera ‘companion’. The most
common meanings associated with the nominal prefix are collectivity, as
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in g
.
esc
.
y ‘a pair of shoes’, and associativity, as in g
.
efera. It should be noted
that this prefix is never stressed, even in nominal contexts.
It is not always possible to give a clear indication of meaning to some
of the prefixes. Thus a-, a verbal prefix found in verbs such as acalan
‘become frozen’, is clearly an intensifier of calan ‘become cold’, but afysan
and fysan can both mean ‘drive away’. Another similar case is be-, as in
bebe¯odan ‘offer’, but again there are other examples with perfective or
intensifying effect, such as belucan ‘lock up’. Other prefixes can have
more than one distinct meaning. An excellent example of this is in-. One
meaning is quite transparent from a present-day perspective, since it is
the same as that for ‘in’ today, hence inga¯n ‘go in’ and inneweard ‘inward’.
But it also has an intensifying meaning, as in infro¯d ‘very wise’.
One point which becomes quickly apparent is that very many of the
Old English prefixes have been lost from the language since that time.
Sometimes the loss is total, as in the case of g
.
e-; sometimes a few exam-
ples may remain, but often their prefixal status is not obvious, as in,
for example arise from OE arı¯san. Other cases still are misleading; for
example the OE prefix in- should not be confused with the Latinate
prefix in- as in incomplete. In later English there was considerable borrow-
ing of prefixes from the Romance languages.
There was in Old English even more suffixation than prefixation. One
general issue is whether a given suffix remained synchronically active in
Old English or was rather a relic of a system which was active only in the
Germanic period or even earlier. Thus it is far from clear that a derived
form such as leng
´
‘length’ (from leng + 
´
) represents a relic or a still
active derivational process; the same is perhaps true of present-day
length, although there are further complications with that form which are
outside the present work.
Some of the Old English suffixes remain in frequent use today. Thus
we find græ¯dig
. ‘greed’ with the suffix -ig.. This suffix is in competition with
the suffix -lic
. found in, for example, de¯oplic. ‘deeply’. So both cræftig. and
cræftlic ‘strong’ therefore occur. In addition, alternative suffixes may have
become prevalent later, hence c
.
ildlic and cildisc ‘childish’ both occur, but
the latter wins out (but note child-like).
There are also other distinguishing features amongst suffixes. Gram-
matically, as with prefixes, we can isolate nominal suffixes, such as -scipe,
which forms nouns from nouns, for example fre¯ondsc
.
ipe ‘friendship’,
adjectival suffixes such as in græ¯dig
. above, and others which change the