Old English Suffixation: Content and Transposition

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the suffixation of Old English with special emphasis on two aspects related to recursivity, namely the combinability and the position of suffixes. A distinction is made between suffixes and suffixoids on the basis of boundedness. An exhaustive description of the recursive and non-recursive suffixal formations allows us to draw conclusions regarding the contentful or transpositional status of the suffixes on the basis of two criteria. The first is positional and refers to the position of transpositional suffixes relative to contentful suffixes. The second is distributional and has to do with the frequency of type of transpositional suffixes as compared to contentful suffixes. The conclusion is drawn that -NES in noun formation and -LĪCE in adjective formation are clearly transpositional while -LIC and -FUL have some transpositional properties. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.