XIII.—The Germanic Suffix -AR-JA

Extract

Few of the Germanic suffixes have recently been discussed so often as the suffix -ar-ja, the most widespread and extensively used suffix of the Germanic dialects. Grimm's theory that this suffix is identical with the suffix -ja plus an additional -r, which, in a modified form, was adopted by Kluge in the first edition of his Stammbildungslehre, has been given up and most scholars seem now to agree with Sütterlin-Möller's explanation, according to which -ar-ja was borrowed from the Latin ārius. This borrowing, as Orthoff suggests, must have been done at two different periods, because it would explain the twofold form -ari and -āri in O.H.G.