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Yoo-kang Kim
(Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
Yoo-kang Kim. 2007. Nominal and Verbal Derivation in Old English: The Case of
Ge-words. Language and Linguistics 40, 21-45. This paper is concerned with
morphological derivation in Old English, specifically nominal and verbal
derivation without affixation. Non-affixational derivation, which is
traditionally called conversion, has been controversial in Old English
word-formation. Morphologists' claims differ in the issues of the
directionality of derivation and the postulation of a zero-morpheme.
For example, Kastovsky (1968, 1992, 1996) argues for zero-derivation,
postulating a zero-morpheme in Old English morphology while Dalton-
Puffer (1992, 1993), Ritt (1993) and Lass (1993) give evidence against
the assumption of zero-derivation in favor of affixless derivation (cf.
Plag 2003). Concerning the directionality of affixless derivation, any
principles or criteria for determining the directionality has not been
offered in Old English morphology. Aiming to give alternative solutions
to these two morphological problems, this article provides a morphological
analysis of Old English ge-words. It is shown that the derivation of
various derivative forms is accounted for by the interplay of Word-
Class Marking and the Zero-Constraint without having the directionality
problem. Furthermore, the non-occurrence of some derivatives is explained
straightforwardly.
* This work was supported by the 2006 Research Grant from Hankuk University
of Foreign Studies.
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1. Introduction
2) "A word in this sense is basically a free form, and can occur in an
utterance without additional material such as inflectional or derivational
morpheme" (e.g., cat in cats); "a stem is a bound, word-class-specific
lexeme representation stripped of any inflectional endings, but potentially
containing derivational affixes or stem-formatives, which determine the
inflectional category of the lexeme in question" (e.g., scient- in scientist);
"a root is the element that is left over when all derivational, stem-forming,
and inflectional elements are stripped away." (e.g., IE *Vd-, OE etan 'to
eat') (Kastovsky 2006: 157)
3) Bauer (1983: 16) defines a stem formative as a "distributional segment
of a word-form independent of whether or not it is also a morph." This term
sometimes called as theme is used to denote an element which, when
added to a root, forms a stem to which inflections may be added. Thus,
Germanic *luf-ōj-an 'love' consists of root + stem formative (theme) +
inflectional ending. See Colman (1985) for the discussion of some morphological
formatives in OE.
Nominal and Verbal Derivation in Old English▪Yoo-kang Kim 25
derived nouns (verb → noun). Kastovsky (1968: 84-89) claims that strong
verbs are always basic, and nouns related to them with or without
ablaut alternations must be regarded as deverbal derivatives. However,
in a synchronic analysis of OE morphology this can no longer be
maintained as a general principle because from a purely synchronic
point of view, there is no overt marker for word-class in the input
(stems in OE) to morphological operations.
Plag (2003: 108-111) presents four possible ways of determining the
directionality of conversion. The first is to look at the history of the
language and see which word was first. However, simply looking at
earliest attestations does not solve the directionality problem. As
described above, according to Kastovsky (1996: 99, cf. Kastovsky 1968),
strong verbs are always basic and the nouns related to strong verbs
are typically deverbal. However, these deverbal nouns, in turn, often
served as the basis for secondary verbal derivatives (e.g., faran 'to
go' (strong verb) > fōr 'going, journey' (derived noun) > fēran 'go, come,
depart') (weak verb). Consequently, from a synchronic point of view, the
directionality problem remains unsolved: the base stem fVr (where V
indicates an ablaut vowel) can be either nominal (considering the
historical relationship between fōr and fēran) or verbal (considering
the relationship between faran and fōr.
The second criterion is to investigate the semantic dependency between
a base and its derived word. Plag (2003) states that, in general,
derived words are semantically more complex than their base. Kastovsky
(1996: 95) also argues for the basis of semantic dependency, demonstrating
that the item which is required for the definition of the other pair is
regarded as the basis (cf. Marchand 1969): PE ring (noun) > ring
(verv) 'to provide with a ring', OE huntian 'to hunt' > hunta 'one
who hunts'. However, the semantic information alone cannot solve the
directional problem because there are many cases where the semantic
relationship between base forms and derived forms cannot be clearly
Nominal and Verbal Derivation in Old English▪Yoo-kang Kim 29
6) Even in PE, there are many cases where the semantic criterion does not
lead to a clear result. For example, forms such as love (N.) and love (V.)
are hard to decide upon because both have existed since OE times, and
that neither of them seems to be semantically primary. Namely, to love
could be paraphrased as 'being in a state of love', which would make
the noun primary. However, the opposite direction can also be argued
for because the noun could be paraphrased as 'state of loving', which
makes the verb primary (cf. Plag 2003: 111).
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below in (4).
Then, I collected nouns (without ge-) and verbs (both with and
without ge-) which are morphologically related to the ge-nouns (e.g.,
feoht, gefeohtan, feohtan related to gefeoht) by referring to Toller's
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1973). Finally, the ge-nouns and their
related words are classified according to 6 categories shown below in
Table 1.
↓ ↓ ↤Zero-derivation(optional)
{feoht} +{ø}
N {B} +{ø}
WCl
↓ ↓ ↤Derivation(optional) 9)
{ge}+[{feoht}N+{ø}] {ge}+[{Base}WCl+{ø}]
↓ ↓ ↤Inflection(optional)
[{ge}+[{feoht}N+{ø}]]+{es} [{ge}+[{Base}WCl+{ø}]]
+Inflectional ending
8) The notation "{ }" indicates an individual morpheme; "[ ]" morphological
structure; "+" a morphological boundary.
9) According to Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 1986), there are
two levels or strata in English derivational morphology and affixes belong
to one of the two. Affixes belonging to one level are distinguished from the
affixes of the other level by a number of properties (e.g,, stress shift,
morpho-phonological alternations). In addition, level 1 affixes are generally
less productive than level 2 affixes. In the theory, irregular inflection
occurs at level 1 while regular inflection takes place at level 2. In this paper,
I do not treat this leveling issue because it is not directly relevant of the
main purpose of this paper.
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(6) OE Zero-Constraint
OE stems can appear as a word at the surface only if either of
the following conditions is satisfied:
(a) an overt affix is attached to them
(b) a zero-morpheme is attached to them
Let us begin with type 1 in which all possible derivatives are attested.
The derivation of the derivative forms are exemplified below in (7).
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↘
{ge}+[{hyld}v] → [{ge}+[{hyld}v]]+{an} → gehyldan
↘
{ge}+[{met} ] → gemet
N
↘
{ge}+[{met}v] → [{ge}+[{met}v]]+{an} → gemetan
The only difference between type 1 and type 2 is that the simplex
nominal form of type 2 words is not attested while all derivative
forms appear in the case of type 1. The absence of simplex nouns in
type 2 can be interpreted as the result of the violation of the Zero-
Constraint in (6). As a zero-morpheme does not occur to the nominal
stem ({met}N), the stem cannot appear as a word. Instead, the
stem is affixed with the prefix ge- and becomes a part of the noun
gemet.
Type 3 includes ge -nouns whose corresponding ge -verbs are not
attested. Their derivation are exemplified below in (9).
↘
(no prefixation) *geflitan
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↘
{{dræg} } → {ge}+[{{dræg} }] gedræg
N N
The simplex nominal form *drag and the ge-verbal form *gedragan
cannot occur as words due to the absence of zero-derivation and
prefixation, respectively. One thing I should mention about this case is
the derivation of umlaut forms: {drag} → {{dæg}}. Historically speaking,
the phonological modification of roots was produced by i-umlaut which
occurred in the pre-OE period. The OE residue of the phonological
vocalic change is the variation of root vowels as shown in (11). From
a synchronic point of view, this issue is involved in the interaction
between morphological operations and phonological change. As this
topic is not directly related with the purpose of this paper, I simply
assume that a modified root form is represented by "{{ }}" (e.g.,
{drag} → {{dæg}}) without providing further relevant discussion.
Last, type 6 only consists of ge-nouns. Simplex nouns and verbal
forms are not found in OE. The derivation of the type-6 ge-nouns is
exemplified below in (12).
5. Conclusion
References