Word-Composition

Word composition was a highly 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.

Compounds in OG languages are usually divided into two types: mor­phological or primary compounds and syntactic or secondary. Morphological com­pounds─ which must have been 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-d e ─ Sunnan —Gen. sg of sunne (Fem. n -stem); d e ─ the head word, ‘Sun’s day’ (NE Sunday); En laland 'land of the Angles' (NE England)─ En la Gen. pl of En le; 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.

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

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-bryc (NE stone bridge), imm-stān (NE gem, lit. “gem stone”), bōc-cr eft ‘literature’ (lit. "book craft"), lēop-cr eft, son –cr eft ‘poetry’ (lit. "song craft, art of singing"), eorp-cr eft 'geography' (OE eorpe, NE earth).

Among compound nouns there were some syntactical compounds: OE witena- emōt 'assembly of Elders', d e es-ēa e 'day's eye' (simplified to NE daisy).

Compound nouns with adjective-stems as the first components were less productive, e.g. wīd-s e ‘ocean’ (lit. "wide sea"), cwic-seolfor (NE quicksilver), ōd-d ed (lit. "good deed"). Compound nouns with verb and adverb-stems were rare: b ec-hūs 'baking house', inn- an 'entrance'.

Compound adjectives were formed by joining a noun-stem to an adjective: dōm- eorn (lit. 'eager for glory'), mōd-cearis 'sorrowful'. The following adjectives are compounded of two adjective stems: wīd-cūp ‘widely known’, fela-mōdi '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', ān-ēa e 'one-eyed'; soon, however, the second component acquired an adjective suffix –ede, thus combining two methods of word-formation: composition and suffixation; cf. ān-ēa e lit. "one eye" and ān-hyrnede ‘ one-horned, with one horn’.

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

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

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