Word Structure

WORD-FORMATION IN OLD ENGLISH

Table 2

Etymological Layers of the Old English Vocabulary

The bulk of the OE vocabulary were native words. In the course of the OE period the vocabulary grew; it was mainly replenished from native sources, by means of word-formation.

According to their morphological structure OE words (like modern words) fell into three main types:

a) simple words ("root-words") or words with a simple stem, contain­ing a root-morpheme and no derivational affixes, e.g. land, sin an, ōd (NE land, sing, good);

b) derived words consisting of one root-morpheme and one or more affixes, e.g. be- innan, weorp-un, un-scyld-i, e-met-in (NE begin, 'worthiness', 'innocent', meeting).

c) compound words, whose stems were made up of more than one root-morpheme, e.g. mann-cynn, norpe-weard, fēower-tīene, weall- eat, scir-

e-refa (NE mankind, northward, fourteen, wall gate, sheriff).

As, stated above, in Late PG the morphological structure of the word was simplified. By the age of writing many derived words had lost their stem-forming suffixes and had turned into simple words. The loss of stem-suffixes as means of word derivation stimulated the growth of other means of word-formation, especially the growth of suffixation.

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