Preverbs and particles in medieval English

This leaves us with the task of actually accounting for the loss of the majority of the Germanic prefixes towards Modern English. As has been shown in the preceding section, the loss of the native prefixes is by no means a sudden phenomenon at the beginning of the Middle English period. Moreover, the common explanations of the disappearance of those prefixes are either rather vague and metaphorical or too general to be of explanatory value. This is true in particular of those accounts which see the loss of prefix verbs and their substitution by phrasal verbs as due to the

‘drift’ of English towards greater analyticity, as e.g. suggested by van der Gaaf (1930), Konishi (1958) or Hiltunen (1983a). Claridge (2000: 87) justly observes that the suggestion that “the general trend towards analytic constructions disfavoured the synthetic prefixal constructions … may be true, [but] it contains a certain amount of circularity, which disqualifies it as a ‘reason’”. Unless one were to identify this drift as an independently operative force in language change (for which there is no evidence at all), one would still have to explain more precisely what the driving forces behind the loss of the prefixes are. Moreover, one would also have to explain why new (native and borrowed) prefixes (i.e. synthetic forms) occur in this ‘drift towards analyticity’.

5.2.1. On sound change and word formation

In most descriptions of the loss of native prefixes reference is made to the loss of vitality of the native prefixes and to the greater vitality of the new Romance prefixes, e.g. by Baugh & Cable (1993: §§ 137–138) and Koziol (1972: § 192); see the critical discussion in Lutz (1997: 259), who observes that the older studies create the impression that the native prefixes were both ousted by the Romance borrowings and “doomed anyway”. How can such a ‘loss of vitality’ be described more precisely? Traditionally it had been seen in connection to the fading of semantic content of the prefixes (cf. Kastovsky 1992: 377 and the references given there), but although the

abandonment of prefixes is not unlikely to be connected to their semantic development, this cannot have been the only causal factor in the develop-ment in English, as a closer look at the Old English prefixes on the following scale of semantic independence (based on Minkova 2008: 30) serves to show:

be-, ge-, for-, of-, on-, to-, and-, ed-, mis-, un-, ... geond-, ofer-, þurh-, wiðer-, ymb-

least independent most independent

What is represented here (apparently on the basis of Horgan 1980, Hiltunen 1983a: 55–91 and Wedel 2001) as semantic independence is, in fact, a syn-chronic and diasyn-chronic cline from the etymological, typically spatial, meaning (‘most independent’) to no apparent meaning at all, up to the point where simple and prefixed verb may be synonymous, or where etymo-logically different, even antonymous prefixes may become interchangeable.

The cline thus shows what Minkova identifies as the desemantization of the particles. In fact, although the process of desemantization of many prefixes was clearly well under way in Old English and continued in Middle Eng-lish, the scale shows clearly that this process cannot be correlated to the loss of prefixes in a straightforward manner: the five prefixes on the left side of the scale were “largely desemanticized” (Minkova 2008: 30) already in Old English. But Minkova’s conclusion that there is a clear cor-relation between the semantic and prosodic weakness of the prefixes is misleading: as a comparison with Tables 5-2 and 5-3 above shows, some of the semantically least independent prefixes continue to exist in English well beyond the Old and even the Middle English period, while conversely some of the semantically most independent ones are abandoned rather early. A case in point are the two leftmost (i.e. the least independent) prefixes shown above, be- and ge-: while be- continues in English as a productive prefix until today, ge- was lost in Middle English, and this process is clearly very much under way already in Old English (on Wedel’s 1997 and 2001 view that ge- was used systematically as a marker of perfectivity in Old English, see the discussion in Section 5.2.3 below).

Lutz (1997) presents an alternative explanation with directed sound change in unaccented syllables as the ultimate cause of the demise of many Old English verbal prefixes. Thus the major factor leading to the loss of native prefixes is to be found in the phonotactically determined destabiliza-tion of the prefixes, and she shows that those prefixes were lost whose phonotactic structure rendered them prone to weakening and loss of

pretonic consonants. This is in principle not dissimilar to an earlier suggestion by Marchand (1969: 130), where, however, just as in the other traditional accounts of the development, the phonological details of the loss of some prefixes are not explored systematically and in greater detail.

Depending on their phonotactic stability, different Old English prefixes were abandoned at different times between Old English and Early Modern English, and the surviving native prefixes and the new borrowed prefixes are, characteristically, quite similar with regard to their stable phonotactic structure. Lutz (1997: 260) therefore argues that “it is not possible to explain the decline of the Old English means of prefixing on the basis of the assumption that prefixation as a means of deriving complex verbs from simplex verbs has been given up altogether” (see there for a short summary of the underlying theoretical assumptions, and cf. also Lutz 1991 and 1992). The effects of sound change on the unaccented syllables of the pre-fixes can be summarized as follows:

phonetic attrition in unaccented syllables → morphological decay

→ loss of prefixes

→ lexical gaps

→ new verbs

(with phonotactically

more stable structures)

Thus the development of the Old English preverbs can be seen as ulti-mately caused by changes in other areas of linguistic structure: phonology (affecting the development of the Old English inseparable prefixes) and syntax (since the changes in English word order towards strict SVO resulted in the general loss of preverbal particles; cf. the discussion in Chapter 3 above). This model is in accord with the cross-linguistically attested model of the development of preverbs proposed in Chapter 3 above, where the long-term development of preverbs along a diachronic cline ‘discourse > syntax > morphology > morphophonemics > zero’ was shown; cf. also Givón’s (1979: 209) classic model of change from dis-course to zero as a unidirectional cline (but see e.g. Traugott 2003b: 630–

631 for a critique of this as a model of grammaticalization).

A clear case of loss due to phonetic attrition is provided by the prefix ge-, which has already been touched upon briefly. It was shown already by Pilch (1955) that its loss was ultimately caused by phonetic attrition (with subsequent paradigmatic levelling and complete loss):

Jedoch schafft der Übergang ʒe->i- die Voraussetzungen für die phonetische Abnutzung unseres Präfixes und leitet damit indirekt seinen Untergang ein.

I- traf nämlich häufig mit gleichem oder ähnlichen Vokal im Hiatus zusammen.

Mit diesem wurde es kontrahiert und fiel aus, z.B. hi iseoþ > hiseoþ > hi seoþ.

Damit entstanden auf rein phonetischem Wege aus alten Kompositis neue, un-präfigierte Formen, und zwar vorzüglich nach vokalisch auslautenden Proklitika. (Pilch 1955: 39–40)

[‘The transition from ʒe->i-, however, creates the conditions for the phonetic attrition of our prefix and thus leads indirectly to its demise, since i- frequently was in hiatus with an identical or similar vowel with which it coalesced and it was then elided, e.g. hi iseoþ > hiseoþ > hi seoþ. In this purely phonetic manner new, unprefixed forms developed out of old compounds, mainly after old pro-clitics that ended in a vowel.’]

Pilch (1955: 38–48) provides a detailed analysis of the successive stages of development (for a thorough discussion of the older literature on the semantics of Old English ge-, see Lindeman 1965 and 1970 and cf. also the discussion by Wischer 2004 and Wischer & Habermann 2004). But in the literature the loss of ge- is widely ascribed to semantic weakening, which, as we have seen, is rather unlikely considering the retained but similarly desemanticized prefix be-, while the distribution and spread of the phonetic reduction of ge- (> Middle English i- > ø) ties in with the general phono-tactic developments observable in English. Cf. e.g. the discussion of Kastovsky’s (1992) account in Chapter 4 above and the more detailed dis-cussion in Lutz (1997: 277–278) and the references given there. Hiltunen (1983a: 65) states that although there seems to be a decline in the use of ge- in the course of Old English (though his data tend to resist a more straightforward claim), little changes in the semantics of the prefix. But nevertheless Minkova still assumes that “functional loss is a precondition for its phonological demise” (2008: 30). In this context a comparison with the development of the two prefixes ge- and be- in German is instructive (cf. Habermann 1994; for the more recent literature, see Erben 2006). In present-day German, ge- has entirely ceased being productive as a deriva-tional affix, and it is fully grammaticalized as a past participle marker, while in Early New High German it still has a marginal derivational func-tion (Habermann 1994: 372–388). The prefix be- has retained a considerable number of derivational meanings, although Habermann ob-serves a tendency in Modern German for this prefix to become more grammatical as well (see Habermann 1994: 255–293; for an overview of the derivational uses of be- in present-day German, see Fleischer & Barz 1995: 320–321). English be-, on the other hand, loses most of its

derivational meanings in the course of the Early Modern English period.

Marchand (1969: 148) states that “[i]t is only with the shade of overloaded-ness, disparagement, or ridicule, that be- is a productive morpheme in Present-day English”. Erben (2006: 138) points out that in German the functional growth of native prefixation is the result of the complex histori-cal interplay of various written discourse traditions from the Middle Ages onwards (see there for further literature). In contrast, the corresponding dis-course traditions in English favoured the use of Romance loans; cf. the discussion of the role of discourse traditions in Schaefer (2006) and the comparative assessment of the role of word formation and borrowing in English and German in Lutz (2002b and 2008).

The approach suggested here accounts well for the loss of prefixes con-taining phonetically weak consonants such as oþ-, where the inherently weak consonant /-θ-/ occurs in a positionally weak final position in an un-accented syllable. The consequent replacement of the prefix in later Old English by the inherently stronger prefixes of- and æt- ties in nicely with other phonotactically conditioned replacements of dental fricatives from late Old English onwards, just as the later abandonment of the positionally equally weak but inherently stronger labiodental fricative in of-. Another phonotactic factor must be taken into account for the loss of æt-, namely that some formations with this prefix would have resulted in unacceptable consonant clusters after resyllabification of Old English /æt$’…/ to /ə$’t…/

in Middle English, e.g. atbear ‘carry off’ (*/tb-/), atfall ‘fall away’ (*/tf-/), atglide ‘slip away’ (*/tg-/), atcome ‘get away’ (*/tk-/), etc. In those cases where the resultant consonant cluster was phonotactically acceptable the morphological structure was bound to become obscure, e.g. atren ‘run away’ (?a$’tren), atshoot (?a$’tshoot), etc. Thus, the plosive would either be lost altogether – just like ed- with the phonetically weaker lenis plosive /-d-/ already in Old English (“due to the phonotactic vulnerability of plo-sives in pretonic position”, Lutz 1997: 273) – or be subject to resyllabifica-tion. In any case, the prefix was eventually reduced to word-initial pretonic /ə-/, which was phonetically indistinct from other unstressed elements, in particular the formerly distinct but similarly weakened prefixes a-, on- and of-. See Lutz (1991: 94–116 and 1997: 267–270) for more examples. Dietz (2004: 573–579) argues that prefix substitution was due to semantic factors at least in the case of æt- substituting oþ-. But his argument rests on the assumption that the substitution of oþ- by the etymologically converse prefix æt- (and sometimes vice versa) must have been due to mutual influ-ence. He does not elaborate on the details of this mutual influence, but his discussion of ætberan vs. oþberan in Beowulf shows that the prefixes be-come synonymous as soon as the origin or the goal of the verbal action is

specified; the semantic convergence does not explain why it is oþ- (and not æt-) which is abandoned first.

The developments of wið- and to- call for more detailed comment, since the former is abandoned considerably later than would otherwise be expected with regard to its phonotactic structure (and it still exists in present-day English in a small number of lexicalized formations, e.g. with-draw), while for the disappearance of the latter no phonotactic explanation at all is at hand. Lutz (1997: 274–275) suggests that wið- resisted destabi-lization for longer than expected due to a combination of various factors:

First, from late Old English onwards the dental plosive in the preposition mid was phonotactically weakened (> mið), and the preposition was gradually replaced by wiþ (while the Old English preposition wiþ was entirely abandoned and replaced by against); consequently, the “dental fricative of the Middle English prefix with- was formally identified with that of the preposition with (< OE mid), whose fricative must have been stronger than that of OE with-” (Lutz 1997: 275). Second, the onset /w/ and the nucleus /i/ contributed to the greater phonotactic stability of the prefix.

And third, it is conceivable that the existence of the homonymous preposi-tion provided formal support for the prefix. With regard to to-, Lutz (1997:

278–279) assumes that this prefix was abandoned due to the rise of the infinitive and the avoidance of repetition (on the rise and spread of the to-infinitive, see e.g. Fischer 1992: § 4.6.2, Fischer et al. 2000: Ch. 7 and Los 2005). But although both hypotheses are not implausible, they clearly show that just like in the cases where attrition was to result in homonymic clashes a wider functional perspective is often necessary to account for the ultimate loss of the prefixes in a satisfactory way. Thus, although it is clear that nearly all of the Old prefixes which were eventually lost were subject to phonetic attrition, this in itself does not always provide a sufficient explanation for their complete disappearance. It is notable that, quite typically, phonotactically conditioned phonetic attrition led to homonymic clashes, as in the case of ymb- (> Middle English um-/em-), fore- (> Middle English for-), which provides an explanation for the abandonment of one or more of these homonyms. But although homonymy has been used extensively as an explanation of linguistic loss in the older structuralist tradition, it should be stressed that homonymy in itself is never sufficient as an explanation of loss, unless the homonymic elements occur in identical contexts (see e.g. Samuels 1972: 67–75 et passim, de la Cruz Cabanillas 1999 and Hopper & Traugott 2003: 102–103). In the cases at hand homonymy destroys the former paradigmatic distinctions between the prefixes and thus greatly impairs their communicative value by rendering them dysfunctionally ambiguous. Consequently, their replacement by less

ambiguous elements can be ultimately ascribed to the phonological changes which rendered them homonymous.

Altogether it seems clear, though, that the semantic development of the prefixes is unlikely to be the sole, let alone the primary driving force behind the abandonment of many of the native prefixes in the history of English, although the loss of semantic content is likely to have acted as a complementary factor to the abandonment of destabilized prefixes and also as an independent factor, as the abandonment of phonotactically stable but semantically extremely diffuse /ə-/ from various sources in Middle English shows. Since verbal prefixation remains productive as a word formation type in English, the loss of older prefixes must be regarded as the sum of individual losses, each of which must be explained individually.

There is no evidence for the particles ousting the prefixes in the sense that they were a causal factor in their disappearance. Rather, as soon as the formation of new prefixes was blocked by the loss of the necessary pre-verbal input, this pattern of attrition and replacement could be continued only by using the now postverbal particles or, alternatively, by analogical formation of borrowed prefixes. Several details of the loss of the Old Eng-lish prefixes are still in need of further exploration, although the major contributing factors have already been identified in the literature. Never-theless, as we have seen there appears to be a recurrent pattern of phonetic attrition and desemantization, up to the point of complete loss of morpho-logical and semantic substance. Moreover, this process sets in as early as pre-Old English and is therefore quite unlikely to be essentially connected to external factors entering the scene in the course of the history of English.

In the context of the present section it is worth stressing this observation again, since it is inextricably connected to the development of the verb-particle construction. The relationship between the prefix verbs and the phrasal verbs is thus clearly much less vexed than has often been assumed in the literature, and at closer inspection even the presumed loss of vitality of the prefixes turns out to be rather doubtful, since the particles turn out to be their functional and semantic equivalents in almost every respect, with two significant differences, namely first with regard to their positional properties, which, as has been shown in Chapter 3 above, must be assumed to prevent their development into preverbally bound affixes, and second with the fact that they are stressed. These two factors work together not only to prevent phonetic attrition of the particles, but also to effect a higher degree of prosodic and semantic salience.

5.2.2. Some comparative evidence

A more-than-cursory, in-depth study of the lexical developments of at least a representative number of particle verbs is conspicuously absent from the literature and would be highly desirable. Apart from the information available in the OED, very little and practically nothing systematic has been undertaken in this direction so far (for an overview of the changing semantic properties of the particles in medieval English, see Hiltunen 1983a: Part IV). The present study as well is not primarily concerned with the development of individual lexical items. With the morphological and phonological discussion of the preceding sections in mind, we will now turn to a brief general overview of the major semantic paths in the deve-lopment of the English verb-particle construction. As has been argued in the discussion in Chapter 3, these paths are quite similar for all kinds of preverbs, with a high degree of cross-linguistic consistency, and in English just as in the other Germanic languages the long-term changes observable in separable prefix verbs and in particle verbs are largely identical.

To start with, let us therefore return briefly to the typical path of development of preverbs sketched in Chapter 3 above. The viability of the model sketched there is provided by the Germanic preverb GE- (Proto-Germanic *γa). The particle is not attested in its probable etymological sense ‘near, at, with, together’ in any Germanic verb (cf. W.P. Lehmann 1986: s.v. ga), but evidence for the etymological meaning of GE- is found outside verbal prefixation in nominal formations (cf. e.g. Kluge–Seebold s.v. ge-). The development from free form to bound affix via preverbal par-ticle is nevertheless evident from a comparative perspective. In all modern Germanic languages where GE- still exists it has been a bound affix

To start with, let us therefore return briefly to the typical path of development of preverbs sketched in Chapter 3 above. The viability of the model sketched there is provided by the Germanic preverb GE- (Proto-Germanic *γa). The particle is not attested in its probable etymological sense ‘near, at, with, together’ in any Germanic verb (cf. W.P. Lehmann 1986: s.v. ga), but evidence for the etymological meaning of GE- is found outside verbal prefixation in nominal formations (cf. e.g. Kluge–Seebold s.v. ge-). The development from free form to bound affix via preverbal par-ticle is nevertheless evident from a comparative perspective. In all modern Germanic languages where GE- still exists it has been a bound affix