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Word-Composition

§ 269. Word composition was a hignly productive way of developing the vocabulary in OE. This method of word-formation was common to all IE languages but in none of the groups has it become as widespread as in Germanic. An abundance of compound words, from poetic meta­phors to scientific terms, are found in OE texts.

As in other OG languages, word composition in OE was more pro­ductive in nominal parts of speech than in verbs.

§ 279. Compaunds in OG languages are usually divided into two types: mor­phological or primary compounds and syntactic or secondary. Morphological com­pounds — which must have bean the earlier type — were formed by combining two stems, with or without a linking element, e. g.: OE mid-niht and midd-e-niht (NE midnight). Syntactic compounds were a later development; they reproduced the pat­tern of a syntactic group, usually an attributive phrase consisting of a noun in the Gen. case and a head noun: OE Sunnan-dæʒ — Sunnan — Gen. sg of sunne (Fem. n-stem); dæʒ — the head word, 'Sun's day' (NE Sunday); Enʒlaland 'land of the Angles' (NE England) — Enʒla Gin. pl of Enʒle; Oxena-ford 'oxen's ford' (NE Oxford). The distinction between the two types can help to determine the origin of the linking element, which may be a remnant of the stem-suffix in a morpho­logical compound or a grammatical inflection — in a syntactical compound. In OE, however, syntactical compounds are rare and the linking vowels in morphological compounds are either reduced and generalised under -e or lacking.

§ 271. Compound nouns contained various first components — stems of nouns, adjectives and verbs; their second components were nouns.

'Originally -e was the. ending of the Instr. case of adjectives used in an ad.' verbial function. The loss of -e has produced homonymous pairs in Mod E; hard adj — hard adv; the suffixes -tic and -lice were reduced to -ly, which is now both an adverb and an adjective suffix, cf.: deadly adj and meekly adv.

The pattern "noun plus noun" was probably the most productive type of all: OE hēafod-mann 'leader' (lit, "head-man"), mann-cynn (NE mankind), hēafod-weard 'leader' (weard 'guard'), stān-brycʒ (NE stone bridge), ʒimm-stān (NE gem, lit. "gem stone"), bōc-cræft 'literature' (lit. "book craft"), lēop-cræft, sonʒ-cræft 'poetry' (lit. "song craft, art of singing"), eorp-cræft 'geography' (OE eorpe, NE earth).

Among compound nouns there were some syntactical compounds: OE witena-ʒemōt 'assembly of Elders', dæʒes-ēaʒe 'day's eye' (simplified to NE daisy; see also the names for the days of the week in § 245).

Compound nouns with adjective-stems as the first components were less productive, e.g. wid-sæ 'ocean' (lit. "wide sea"), cwic-seolfor (NE quicksilver), ʒōd-dǣd (lit. "good deed"). Compound nouns with verb and adverb-stems were rare; bæc-hūs 'baking house', inn-ʒanʒ 'entrance'.

§ 272. Compound adjectives were formed by joining a noun-stem to an adjective: dōm-ʒeorn (lit. 'eager for glory'), mōd-ceariʒ 'sorrowful'. The following adjectives are compounded of two adjective stems: wid-cūp 'widely known', fela-mōdiʒ 'very brave'.

The most peculiar pattern of compound adjectives was the so-called "bahuvrihi type" — adjective plus noun-stem as the second component of an adjective. This type is exemplified by mild-heort 'merciful', stip-mōd 'brave', an-ēaʒe 'one-eyed'; soon, however, the second component acquired an adjective suffix -ede, thus combining two methods of word-formation: composition and suffixation; cf. ān-ēaʒe lit. "one eye" and ān-hyrnede 'one-horned, with one horn'.

§ 273. The remarkable capacity of OE for derivation and word-composition is manifested in numerous words formed with the help of several methods: un-wis-dōm 'folly' — un — negative prefix, wis — ad­jective-stem (NE wise), dōm — noun-stem turning into a suffix; pēaw-fæst-nes 'discipline' — pēaw n 'custom', fæst adj 'firm' (NE fast), -nes — suffix.

§ 274. Table 3 gives a summary of the principal means of word-formation employed in OE and the main spheres of their usage.

Table 3

Word-Formation in Old English

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