Bilynska, Olha

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25Z E S Z Y T Y  N A U K O W E   UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 47/2007           STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 4Olha BILYNSKA ROMANCE SUFFIX RIVALRY OF ACTION NOUNS FROM MIDDLE ENGLISH VERBS IN THE OED TEXTUAL PROTOTYPES Introduction The aim of the present paper lies in revealing the diachronic productivity of rival suffixal models of deverbal nouns and common-root suffix variance in the etymological layers of ME verbs. We shall proceed on the assumption that the issue of reconstructing onomasiological resources over time is possible from the earliest quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth: OED) that are also known as diachronic textual prototypes. To meet the aims of this study, the running selection of textual prototypes for ME verbs and their action nouns with Romance suffixes was compiled. The entire 2nd CD-Rom edition, version 3 was used (Weiner 1999). A somewhat comparable approach can be found in Zbierska-Sawala (1989) and Culperer and Phoebe (1996). The issue of the rivalry between borrowed suffixes is brought up in Kastovsky (2006:165). The heuristic potential of the evidence from the OED textual prototypes can be realized only with the development of specific software capable to meet the set tasks.  Etymological classes of Middle English verbs French penetrations into the Middle English verbal system amount to 2,099 lexemes  (only  subsequently  productive  verbs  are  considered).  They  all  have separate lemmata in the OED. There are also 114 stems of verbs that are found in  the  deverbal  coinages  of  various  categorial  affiliation  dated  before  1500. However, their diachronic textual prototypes are dated after 1500.  All in all, to determine the streams of French influence on ME use is made of the notion of the contacteme. The contacteme is a cognate, otherwise referred to as etymon, from the source language deemed to have been the bridge in the 26process of inter-language interaction recoverable from the etymological sources (see Skeat 1909; Onions, Friedrichsen and Burchfield 1966; Klein 1971; Stone and Rothwell 1977–1990). The first stream of French influence on the Middle English lexicon came from Anglo-Norman. A proportion of such penetrations reveal  Anglo-Norman  etymons  only,  otherwise  labelled  as  Anglo-French  or Norman French: allay* 1377, avent* 1375... [71 verbs]. For  reasons  of  space  the  results  of  the  enquiries  into  the  developed electronic framework of analysis will be limited to initial representation of the downloadable alphabetical lists with the indication of the total number of cases in the square brackets following the illustration. The lexemes that have become archaic are marked with asterisks. Such lists are diachronic lexicological objects whose  constituents  were  entered  into  the  aggregate  database  manually.  The objects are construable upon the application of the developed software and may constitute a protocol to the queries in the form of an appendix.  Most of the verbs with Anglo-Norman cognates, however, also show up in a concomitant etymon in Old French: abash 1325, accloy 1325, affeer 1440 … [201 verbs ]. These two groups of verbs constitute the first and earliest layer of French  lineage  into  ME  verbs. The  verbs  that  penetrated  into  ME  revealing Anglo-Norman etymons were juxtaposed with the penetrations of the second etymological layer of French lineage that originate from Old French etymons having  no  attested  Anglo-Norman  parallels:  abandon  1375,  abase  1393, abatayl* 1380... [1446 verbs].Some of the verbs in each of the two etymological layers that have been singled  out  have  Middle  French  or  –  alternatively  –  contemporary  French etymons. In such cases the role of the contacteme which is focal to our research is allotted to an older, i.e. Old French or Anglo-Norman cognate, respectively. At the same time, there are verbs with the OED textual prototypes dated in ME the etymological derivation of which is confined to Middle French etymons: accept 1360, adverse* 1393, advert 1423 … [122 verbs]. There are also verbs whose etymological  derivation  stops  at  the  contemporary  French  cognates:  ￿bolish 1490, absent 1400, abuse 1413 … [259 verbs]. The latter two sets of verbs make up a third etymological layer of French penetrations into Middle English. The prerequisite of referring verbs to the third layer of French lineage is negative: their respective cognates attested in the etymological dictionaries are lacking documented Old French and/or Anglo-Norman contactemes. Unless they were neologisms of a later period in the source language itself, the adduced etymons of this layer of penetrations into the English lexicon have earlier forms of their own in Middle or Old French. The fact that these source language forms were  not  recognized  as  contactemes  in  the  etymological  derivation  of  the respective penetrations into the ME lexicon seems controversial in view of the arising  chronological  discrepancy:  Old  French  is  recognized  to  be chronologically homogeneous with Middle English but the verbs that have OED27registered textual prototypes in Middle English are attributed post-Old French parallels by the etymological dictionaries.  The  easiest  way  to  deal  with  this  controversy  is  to  claim  that  the etymological  dictionaries  are  inconsistent.  Obviously,  this  is  not  the  best solution. Another possibility is to hypothesize that the contacteme in the verbs belonging to the third etymological layer of French influence on English was probably in the Latin cognate which some of these verbs indeed had. Yet, most of the verbs with the said parameters of etymological derivation to post-Old French cognates had no Latin parallels that could be recognized as probable contactemes in the process of language interaction.  In  the  first  two  etymological  layers  of  French  penetrations  into  the  ME verbs,  about  a  quarter  of  lexemes  had  their OED  textual  prototypes  attested before 1300. In the third etymological layer verbs typically show their earliest quotations  attested  after  the  year  1300  although  there  are  some  counter-examples: arm 1205, depaint* 1225, dure 1275 … [7 verbs]. The  verbs  that  penetrated  into  Middle  English  via Anglo-Norman  or  Old French occasionally reveal Latin cognates. However, of the two parallel cognates the French one is taken for a contacteme. At the same time, there are a number of verbs of non-native origin in ME that show Latin cognates only: abbreviate 1450, abhor 1449, abject* 1475 … [358 verbs ]. In contrast to the quota revealed for verbs of French lineage, among the penetrations from Latin there was a much higher proportion of constituents (over 250 verbs) attested in the OED textual prototypes after 1500 whose common-root coinages were found in the OED first citations  dated  before  1500.  According  to  the  earliest  OED  quotations,  the penetration of verbs into ME from the three layers of French lineage exceeded the number  of  verbal  neologisms  of  native  etymology  registered  in  that  period: abraid* 1430, accurse 1175, acknowledge 1481… [1,539 verbs]. Making sense of productivity data Let us now consider the earliest quotations of deverbal coinages originating from verbs of French origin dated in the OED before 1500. Four suffixal models of Romance origin responsible for the creation of action nouns from these verbs, namely -age, -ance, -(t/s)ion and -ment, are taken into account. The homonymy of one-word action nouns and factitive nouns is resolved by taking into account the older counterpart. In this study the dating of the OED textual prototypes of the verb and those of its common-root single or multiple (when there are two or more than two coinages) action nouns were entered into an electronic database. Then software was developed to assess the number of coinages with a given suffix at a specific moment of time for the respective etymological layer(s) by building their distribution curves. 28Throughout EME (1150–1300) the suffix -ance was found in the textual prototypes  of  action  nouns  more  often  than  other  Romance  suffixes: acquaintance  1300,  allegeance*  1297,  coverance*  1300  …  [16  coinages].Following it in the gradually descending scale are the suffixes -ment and -ion: acoupement* 1300, admonishment 1300, advancement 1297 … [14 coinages] and assumption 1297, citation 1297, circumcision 1175 … [10 coinages]. There is a single OED attested derivative with the suffix -age: passage 1290. We will preserve the succession of suffixes originating from their EME productivity for all the electronic queries.  The evidence for LME is based on the OED textual prototypes dated after 1300. Suffixal models of Romance etymology for the creation of action nouns in LME (1301–1500) reveal a gradually descending scale of diachronic productivity (see Figure 1), which does, however, vary from one etymological layer to another. In the first etymological layer of French penetrations into ME the suffixes -mentand  -ance  are  almost  equally  attested:  cf.  abashment  1410,  amercement  1386 anornament*  1325… [22  coinages]  and  abashance*  1430,  affeerance*  1432, allegeance* 1400 … [19 coinages]. The derivatives with the other two suffixes  -ion  and -age are quite individual: cf. exception 1385, occupation 1340 … [4 coinages] and stoppage 1465, testimonage* 1483 [2 coinages].In the stems of the second layer of French influence throughout LME the suffix -age remains the least productive: arrearage 1315, arrivage* 1384, coinage 1380 … [12 coinages]. The suffix -ance (accordance 1303, acquittance 1330, allowance 1377 … [61 coinages]) was less productive than the other two suffixes: -ment (accordment 1330, accusement 1374, advisement 1330 … [82 coinages]) and  -ion  (administration  1315,  admonition  1374,  alienation  1388  …  [73 coinages]).  Of  the  latter  two  suffixes,  the  suffix  -ion  had  never  been  more productive than the suffix -ment in contrast to the mean ratio shown on curves 2 and 3 for the aggregate productivity of these suffixes in LME (see Figure 1). However, for a short while between 1440 and 1460 the actual number of coinages with these suffixes in the second etymological layer of verbs was identical. In  the  third  etymological  layer of French lineage into the ME verbs the suffix -ment, which was the most active one in the previous two layers is less than only half as active as the suffix -ion: cf. advertisement 1460, arbitrament 1400, arrousement* 1483 … [27 coinages] and abusion* 1374, acception 1382 adversation*  1470  …  [68  coinages].  This  difference  is  responsible  for  the period of the highest diachronic productivity of the suffix -ion in curve 3 of Figure  1.  The  productivity  of  the  suffix  -age  is  unsurprisingly  negligible: pickage 1364, repassage 1413, taxage* 1483 [3 coinages]. In contrast to ME textual prototypes of coinages from the first two etymological layers of French lineage the productivity of the suffix -ance in LME for the third etymological layer  appears  to  be  quite  humble:  assistance  1398,  convenance  1483, discontinuance 1398… [13 coinages].29Figure 1. Suffix productivity for the stems of French lineage in LME. Post-ME OED textual prototypes of the studied suffixal coinages had just one descending productivity scale throughout the period that can be seen from the  vertical  succession  of  the  numeric  values  on  the  respective  curves  for ‘moments in history’ put on the horizontal axis (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). The gap between the productivity of the suffixes -ment and -ion tended to increase.  The  other  two  suffixes  remained  peripheral  but  the  productivity difference  between  them  was  smaller  than  in  the  ME  textual  prototypes. However, the OED textual prototypes dated after 1500 reveal a layer-bound relatedness of the productivity of the suffixes -ment and -ion different from that established for the OED textual prototypes dated before 1500.In the first etymological layer of French lineage for one derivative in -ionthere were about five coinages in -ment: cf. deforciation 1864, disclamation1592, disportation* 1622 … [10 coinages] and affrayment* 1731, allegement* 1516, appropriament* 1633 … [46 coinages]. A similar ratio was found for verbs  which  show  only  Old  French  contactemes:  cf.  abjuration  1514, absorption 1597, abstention 1521 … [78 coinages] and abandonment 1611, abasement 1561, abatement 1513 … [246 coinages]. In the third etymological layer of French lineage the ultimate productivity of the latter two suffixes is quite close although diachronically the suffix -iontended  to  be  predominant  (see  Figure  3).  However,  in  the  corpus  of  OEDtextual prototypes from post-ME sources the suffix -ment revealed a higher growth  rate  than  the  suffix  -ion:  cf.  abolishment  1542,  absentment*  1600, abusement* 1819 … [75 coinages] and absentation 1800, alimentation 1590, annexion 1600 … [39 coinages]. 0204060801001201401601801301 1321 1341 1361 1381 1401 1420 1440 1460 1480 1500D:1 B:F S:ance    D:1 B:F S:ment   D:1 B:F S:tion      D:1 B:F S:age     30Figure 2. Suffix productivity for the stems of French lineage after ME.  Figure 3. Suffix productivity after 1500 for the stems of the third layer of French lineage into ME.  The highest occurrence of the suffix -ion in the third layer of French lineage into the ME verbs coincides with the dominant status of the same suffix in the descending productivity scale for action nouns originating from ME stems with Latin  contactemes  (see  Figure  4):  abbreviation  1485,  abjection  1410, abomination 1366 … [434 coinages]; abhorment* 1576, adjectament* 1630, adjurement  1382  …  [61  coinages];  accedence  1597,  ascendance  1742, committance*  1650  …  [41  coinages];  distillage  1877,  narratage  1948, plantage* 1606 [3 coinages]. 0204060801001201501 1543 1585 1626 1668 1710 1752 1794 1835 1877 1919D:1 B:F S:ance    D:1 B:F S:ment   D:1 B:F S:tion      D:1 B:F S:age     01002003004005006001501 1546 1590 1635 1679 1724 1769 1813 1858 1902 1947D:1 B:F S:ance    D:1 B:F S:ment   D:1 B:F S:tion      D:1 B:F S:age     31Figure 4. Suffix productivity from the stems that penetrated into ME from Latin. The  Romance  suffixes  were  assimilated  and  attached  to  native  stems attested in the OED before 1500 with a gradually descending productivity scale of  their  own  (see  Figure  5).  Notice  that  in  contrast  to  all  the  non-native etymological layers of ME verbs, the suffix -age is several fold more productive than  the  suffixes  -ion  and  -ance  (see  curves  2,  3  and  4  on  Figure  5): acknowledgment 1594, affordment* 1633, agastment* 1594 … [102 coinages]; answerage*  1642,  bestowage*  1656,  borrowage*  1440  …  [91  coinages]; abearance 1568, abidance 1647, bearance 1725… [27 coinages], blubberation 1812, blusteration 1803, chattation 1799 … [16 coinages]. Figure 5. Romance suffix productivity from native stems attested up till 1500. 0204060801001201290 1357 1423 1490 1556 1623 1690 1756 1823 1889 1956D:1 B:E S:ance    D:1 B:E S:ment   D:1 B:E S:tion      D:1 B:E S:age     0501001502002503003504004501225 1298 1370 1443 1515 1588 1661 1733 1806 1878 1951D:1 B:L S:ance    D:1 B:L S:ment   D:1 B:L S:tion     D:1 B:L S:age     32Conclusions It is fairly obvious that any study of suffixal productivity is inseparable from the requirements of completeness and accuracy in respect to the drawn evidence. At  the  same  time,  it  seems  to  surpass  mere  mechanical  calculations.  The established  proportions  between  the  obtained  lists  of  coinages  with  specific suffixes demonstrate the onomasiological potential available in sections of the lexicon over time.  The  historical  distribution  of  coinages  with  Romance  suffixes  in  the etymological classes of ME verbs proves to be uneven. The fluctuation of this unevenness with the affiliation of the intermediate productivity points to the layers of the etymologically mixed ME lexicon is recoverable from the OEDtextual prototypes with the help of adequate strategies of corpus-based queries. The framework developed here is believed to be applicable to the study of other manifestations  of  suffix  rivalry  in  the  historical  deverbal  word-formation  of English. References Dictionaries Klein, E. 1971. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Amsterdam, Oxford, New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company.  Onions,  C.T.,  G.W.S.  Friedrichsen  and  R.W.  Burchfield.  1966.  The  Oxford  Dictionary  of English Etymology. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. Skeat,  W.W.  1909.  An  Etymological  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language.  Oxford:  At  the Clarendon Press. Stone, L.W. and W. Rothwell (eds). 1977–1990. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. London. Fasc. 1–6. Weiner,  E.  (ed.).  1999.  Oxford  English  Dictionary  (OED).  2nd  CD-Rom  edition,  version  3.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Other works Culperer, J. and C. Phoebe. 1996. ‘The borrowing of classical and Romance words into English: A study based on the electronic Oxford English Dictionary’ [in:] International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 1 (2), pp. 199–218. Kastovsky, D. 2006. ‘Typological changes in derivational morphology’ [in:] van Kemenade, A. and B. Los (eds). The Handbook of the History of English. Blackwell Publishing, pp. 151–177. Zbierska-Sawala, A. 1989. ‘On the status of French derivational suffixes in Early Middle English’ [in:] Studia Anglica Posnaniensia. XXII, pp. 91–99. 

A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.

Romance suffix rivalry of action nouns from Middle English verbs in the OED textual prototypes

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