The old English adjectival suffixes "-cund" and "-isc"textual occurrences and productivity

Abstract

The aim of this journal article is to assess the productivity of the Old English adjectival suffixes -cund and -isc by analysing the textual occurrences of these affixes in The Dictionary of Old English Corpus. The result of the measure of productivity, which is is based on Baayen’s framework (1992, 1993), is that -isc is more productive than -cund. Along with this conclusion, some relevant points arise from the analysis, including the restricted competition between -isc and -cund, the absence from dictionaries of the nominal bases of derivation of -isc adjectives and the semantically predictable formations. On the methodological side, the analysis that has been carried out demonstates that lexicographical sources, dictionaries and databases in isolation cannot give an accurate picture of productivity, whereas an analysis that combines the use of textual and lexicographical sources allows for a suitable assessment of the productivity of morphological processes in a historical language.