Prefixation

Word Stress

The role of word accentuation in OE word-building was not great. Like sound interchanges, the shifting of word stress helped to differentiate between some parts of speech being used together with other means. The verb had unaccented prefixes while the corresponding nouns had stressed prefixes, so that the position of stress served as an additional distinctive feature between them, e.g. ond-'swarian v — 'ond-swaru n. In some nouns, however, the prefix was as unaccented as in the verbs.

Prefixation was a productive way of building new words in OE. Genetically, some OE prefixes go back to IE prototypes, e.g. OE un-, a negative prefix (the element - n- is found in negative prefixes in many IE languages, cf. Fr ne, R не, ни). Many more prefixes sprang in PG and OE from prepositions and adverbs, e.g. mis -, be-, ofer-. Some of these prepositions and adverbs continued to be used as independent words as well.

Prefixes were widely used with verbs but were far less pro­ductive with other parts of speech. We can cite long lists of verbs derived from a single root, with the help of different prefixes:

The most frequent, and probably the most productive, OE prefixes were: ā-, be-, for-, fore-, e·, ofer-, un-. Of these only un- was common with nouns: and adjectives, the rest were mainly verb prefixes.

The prefix modified the lexical meaning of the word, usually without changing its reference to a part of speech: e-boren ─ un eboren (adjectivised participle; NE born ─ unborn); sip ─ for-sip n ‘journey’, ‘death’; d ed ─ un-d ed n NE deed ‘crime’; īepelīce ─ un- īepelice adv ‘easily’, with difficulty’, spēdi ─ unspēdi adj ‘rich’, ‘poor’.

Some prefixes, both verbal and nominal, gave a more special sense to the word and changed its meaning very considerably: e.g. ytan —on- ytan (NE get), 'perceive', weorðan ─ for-weorðan v, forwyrð n ‘become’, ‘perish’, ‘destruction’, bū an ─ bebū an (NE bow), 'surround'. A distinct semantic group was constituted by negative prefixes un-, mis-, wan-, or- (the two latter were nominal prefixes only), e.g.: hāl ─ unhāl or wan-hāl 'healthy', 'unhealthy', wīsdōm ─ unwīsdōm (NE wisdom), 'folly'; līcian ─ mislīcian (NE like), 'displease', limpan or elimpan─ mislimpan 'happen' ─ 'go wrong', sor n ─ orsor adj (NE sorrow), 'unconcerned, careless'.

Some prefixes had a very weak or general meaning bordering on grammatical, e.g.: e -, the commonest verb prefix, conveyed the meaning of result or completion and was therefore often used as a marker of the Past Participle ─ sittan ─ e-sett, stelan ─ estolen (NE sit, steal). e- and ā- changed the aspective meaning of the verb and turned it from durative into perfective or terminative without affecting its lexical meaning as in feran ─ eferan 'go ─ reach', drincan ─ e-drincan 'drink ─ drink off, winnan ─ ewinnan 'fight ─ win', sendan ─ āsendan 'send ─ send off. With some verbs the meaning of the prefix was so weak and vague that there was practically no difference between the verb with the prefix and without it, e.g.: ābīdan ─ bīdan 'await', swerian ─ āswerian 'swear'. With other verbs the same prefix could bring about a shift of meaning, e.g.: sittan ─ e-sittan 'sit ─ occupy'.

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