Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:16:11.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prosodically conditioned morphological change: preservation vs loss in Early English prefixes1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2012

BENJAMIN J. MOLINEAUX
BENJAMIN J. MOLINEAUX*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford, Centre for Linguistics and Philology, Walton Street, Oxford OX1 2HGUKbenjamin.molineaux@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the motivations behind the loss of a number of Germanic prefixes in the history of English. Using Old and Middle English translations of Boethius’ de Consolatione Philosophiae as a corpus, it is shown that prefix loss is not specific to a single word category, nor to the presence of morphosyntactic characteristics such as prefix separability. This state of affairs cannot be explained by current theories of prefix loss, which are generally restricted to inseparable verbal prefixes. The fact that some prefixes are lost and some are preserved, also argues against an across-the-board grammaticalisation account, based mostly on semantic factors. It is held here that a closer look at the prosodic structure of native prefixes can provide a principled explanation for the entirety of our data. To this effect, the optimisation of a resolved moraic trochee (Dresher & Lahiri, 1991) amid significant restructuring of the language's lexicon had crucial impact on the fate of prefixed words. In particular, Early Middle English would have come to prefer maximal, branching feet, and avoid words with prefixes constituting heavy, non-branching feet. Ultimately, the preservation of prosodic structure led to the loss of heavy monosyllabic prefixes due to stress clash between prefix and root. Light monosyllabic and bisyllabic prefixes, in contrast, were preserved, since no clash occurred. This argument explains the changes in prefixation from a purely prosodic standpoint, hence accounting for the data for both verbal and nominal prefixes, which were heretofore dealt with separately.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 427 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The author would like to thank Aditi Lahiri for her enthusiasm, feedback and continuous support throughout this article's successive drafts. The detailed comments of two anonymous reviewers are also much appreciated, having added greater rigour and clarity to the final version.

References

Aronoff, Mark. 1983. Potential words, actual words, productivity and frequency. Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Linguistics, 163–71.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English word formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2001. Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baugh, Albert. 1935. A history of the English language. London: D. Appleton-Century Company.Google Scholar
Benson, L. 2008. The cannon and chronology of Chaucer's work. In Cannon, Christopher (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer, xxii–xxv. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert & van Kemenade, Ans. 2003. Preverbs: An introduction. In Booij, Geert and van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2003, 1–13. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booij, Geert. 2005. The grammar of words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bosworth, Joseph & Toller, T. Northcote. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel. 1988. The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. 2006. MED online. Michigan: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Danielsson, Bror. 1948. Studies on the accentuation of polysyllabic Latin, Greek, and Romance loan-words in English. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
De la Cruz, Juan. M. 1975. Old English pure prefixes: Structure and function. Linguistics 145, 47–81.Google Scholar
Dictionary of Old English Corpus. 2009. DOE online. Toronto: University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Dresher, Elan & Lahiri, Aditi. 1991. The Germanic foot: Metrical coherence in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 22:2, 251–86.Google Scholar
Dresher, Elan & Lahiri, Aditi 2003. Main stress left in Early Middle English. In Fortescue, Michael, Jensen, Eva Skafte, Mogensen, Jens Erik & Schøsler, Lene (eds.), Historical linguistics 2003, 75–85Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Elenbaas, Marion. 2007. The synchronic and diachronic syntax of the English verb–particle combination. Nijmegen, Radboud University dissertation (LOT Dissertations 149).Google Scholar
Fikkert, Paula. 2003. The prosodic structure of prefixed words in the history of West Germanic. In Fikkert, Paula & Jacobs, Haike (eds.), Development in prosodic systems, 315–48. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fikkert, Paula, Dresher, Elan & Lahiri, Aditi. 2006. Prosodic preference: From Old English to Early Modern English. In van Kemenade, Ans & Los, Bettelou (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 125–50. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gaaf, Willem van der. 1930. The passive of a verb accompanied by a preposition. English Studies 12 (1), 1–24.Google Scholar
Godden, Malcolm & Irvine, Susan. 2009. The Old English Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Keyser, Samuel. 1971. English stress: Its form, growth and its role in verse. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hanna, Ralph & Traugott, Lawler. 2008. Introduction to Chaucer's Boece. In Cannon, C. (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer, 395–7. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1989. Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 253–306.Google Scholar
Hiltunen, Risto. 1983. The decline of the prefixes and the beginnings of the English phrasal verb. Turku: Turun Yliopisto.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard. 1992. A grammar of Old English, vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1975. The syntax of the simple sentence in Proto-Germanic. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth C.. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horobin, Simon & Smith, Jeremy. 2002. An introduction to Middle English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hulst, Harry van der. 2003. Word prosodic systems of the languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian. 2004. Rescuing traditional (historical) linguistics from grammaticalisation theory. In Fischer, Olga, Norde, Muriel & Perridon, Harry (eds.), Up and down the cline: The nature of grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kastovsky, Dieter. 1992. Semantics and vocabulary. In Hogg, Richard (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English Language, vol. 1, 290–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van & Los, Bettelou. 2003. Particles and prefixes in Dutch and English. In Geert, Booij & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2003, 79–117. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Calvin. 1981. The prefix un- and the metrical grammar of Beowulf. Anglo Saxon England 10, 29–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1998. Sievers’ Law as prosodic optimization. In Jasanoff, Jay, Melchert, H. Craig & Oliver, Lisi (eds.), Mír Curad: Studies in honor of Calvert Watkins. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1964. The inflectional categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Fikkert, Paula. 1999. Trisyllabic shortening in English: Past and present. English Language and Linguistics 3 (2), 229–67.Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi, Riad, Thomas & Jacobs, Haike. 1999. Diachronic prosody. In van der Hulst, H. (ed.), Word prosodic systems in the languages of Europe, 335–422. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1994. Old English: A historical linguistic companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, Angelika. 1997. Sound change, word formation and the lexicon: The history of the English prefix verbs. English Studies 78 (3), 258–90.Google Scholar
Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan. 1986. Prosodic morphology 1986. Ms, University of Massachusetts, Amherst & Brandeis University. http://ling.rutgers.edu/gamma/pm86all.pdf.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John & Prince, Alan 1990. Foot and word in prosodic morphology: The Arabic broken plural. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8 (2), 209–83.Google Scholar
Middle English Dictionary. 2001. MED online. Michigan: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 1997. The credibility of Pseudo-Alfred: Prosodic insights in post-conquest mongrel meter. Modern Philology 94 (4), 427–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2003. Alliteration and sound change in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2006. Old and Middle English prosody. In van Kemenade, Ans & Los, Bettelou (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 95–124. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 2008. Prefixation and stress in Old English. Word Structure 1 (1), 21–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Richard. 1868. Chaucer's translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae. London: Early English Text Society.Google Scholar
Ogura, Michiko. 1995. The interchangeability of Old English verbal prefixes. Anglo-Saxon England 24, 67–93.Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. 1989. OED online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prokosch, Edward. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Russom, Geoffrey. 1998. Beowulf and Old English meter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Samuels, Michael L. 1972. Linguistic evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedgefield, Walter. 1899. King Alfred's Old English version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sievers, E. 1893. Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Stanley, E. 1983. The prenominal prefix ge- in Late Old English and Early Middle English. Transactions of the Philological Society 80 (1), 25–66.Google Scholar
Trommelen, M. (1983) The syllable in Dutch: With special reference to diminutive formation. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar