Verbal prefixes in Old Northumbrian

Abstract

In late Old English dialects, adverbial elements are frequently morphologically ambiguous (independent words, clitics, verbal prefixes, etc.), and an important facet of the proper treatment of these items is the quality of source-data in different texts. This paper examines the usage of three adverbial/prepositional elements in the Northumbrian Lindisfarne Glosses: eft ‘again, after’, ymb ‘around’, and ofer ‘over’. Skeat (1871–87), whose transcription of the original manuscript is the primary reference for research on the Glosses, frequently transcribes these items as prefixes, alongside other OE prefixes like ge-, a-, for-, and be-. However, Skeat also deviates from this pattern in many cases, leaving their proper analysis uncertain. Nevertheless, various works (e.g., Cook 1894; Bosworth 2011), have indeed taken these items to be prefixes. I follow Fernández-Cuesta (2016) in revisiting the original Lindisfarne manuscript to determine the correct treatment of these items, concluding that eft and ofer should not be analyzed as prefixes in the manuscript, while ymb should have prefix status.

Reduced forms in the nominal morphology of the Lindisfarne Gospel Gloss. A case of accusative/dative syncretism?

“…Given that Skeat's edition has been shown to present some errors and inaccuracies (cf. Fernández Cuesta 2016;Kruger 2019;Walkden 2016: 244), all instances have been checked against the facsimile edition of the manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Nero D. iv (Kendrick et al 1956)). Collation with the digitized manuscript has also allowed us 6 Lass (1994: 132) also points out that "the Old English paradigm shows why the conventional listing of nouns by (historical) stem classes can be misleading … Old English giest is morphologically an a-stem … and it is only comparison with Go gast-s and a cognate with L host-i-s that shows why it is classified as an a-stem.…”