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Syntactic and Semantic Rules in Old English Adjective Formation

Paper · 2013 · Raquel Vea Escarza

Summary

Research on Old English word-formation has concentrated on units, categories, processes and productivity. The meaning shifts that derivation produces, and the lexical relations it creates, have received little attention. Vea Escarza addresses this gap for affixal adjectives. She has two goals: an exhaustive inventory of the bases, affixes and processes that yield these adjectives, and a systematic description grounded in current theory. She adopts Pounder's (2000) Process and Paradigm Model, which builds on Mel'čuk's Meaning-Text Theory. In that model each derivation is a sign with three parts: a formal operation (base plus affix), a semantic rule (a lexical function applied to the base meaning) and a syntactic rule (the category change). Pounder designed her function inventory for 16th-century German, and the paper adapts it to Old English. Adjectives drawn from the Nerthus lexical database are then analysed through their syntactic and semantic rules, and an appendix glosses every item in Present-day English. The work matters because it recasts derivational morphology as explicit, function-based meaning relations that structure the word families running through the lexicon.

Key points

  • Theoretical frame: Pounder's (2000) Process and Paradigm Morphology, based on Mel'čuk's (1996, 2006) Meaning-Text Theory, which links meaning to form through strata such as SemR, DSyntR and SSyntR.
  • A word-formation operation has three components: the form change (X→Y), the derivational function f('X') and the category change ΣX → ΣY, each with its restrictions.
  • The data comes from affixal adjectives retrieved from the Nerthus database of Old English.
  • Primary functions taken over from Pounder include REL, EX, LIKE, DIM and I, illustrated with words such as eletrēowen, wudiht and sāmbærned.
  • Secondary or evaluative functions include PEJ (misscrence), INTENS (foresnotor) and DIST (twihwēole). Figurative "as if" senses are modelled as composed functions such as LIKE(EX('X')).

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Each derived word is split into three separable rules: how its form changes, which meaning function it applies, and how its word class shifts. This keeps morphology analysable instead of opaque.
  • I2. Derivational meaning is drawn from a small, closed set of lexical functions (origin, likeness, possession, diminution, negation and so on) rather than from free-text glosses.
  • I3. Primary functions create meaning, while secondary functions (pejorative, intensifying, augmentative) only modulate a meaning that already exists. This gives a clean layer for evaluation.
  • I4. Figurative senses are expressed as a composed function LIKE(f(X)), as with "flaxen hair". The hair resembles flax; it is not made of it.
  • I5. The paper separates the morphological paradigm (operations possible for a whole word class) from the lexical paradigm (operations actually attested for a given word).

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (tokens): The morphology in crate en could store derived lemmas as tuples of base, affix, function and POS change (e.g. wooden = EX(wood)), so every lemma analysis comes with a readable justification.
  • I2 (world): Affixed adjectives could be compiled into typed knowledge-graph relations, so that an EX-adjective like "wooden table" asserts a material link between the table and wood.
  • I3 (frames): Pejorative and intensifying affixes could be treated as stance overlays on a frame, which can feed speaker-attitude, irony and implicature detection without changing who-did-what.
  • I4 (world): When a composed "as if" function is detected, the world model should record resemblance instead of a literal material or possession fact, which prevents false entity states.
  • I5 (back): Generation could propose derivations licensed by the class paradigm but emit only those confirmed in the word's attested paradigm, avoiding plausible-looking non-words.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Universidad de La RiojaLogroño · Spain13 works · 74 citations

📚 Shelves 2The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 worksHistorical linguistics & language change · 159 works

Cite

Cite as Raquel Vea Escarza. 2013. Syntactic and Semantic Rules in Old English Adjective Formation. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 45.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20129259

@article{escarza2013syntactic,
  title = {{Syntactic and Semantic Rules in Old English Adjective Formation}},
  author = {Raquel Vea Escarza},
  journal = {Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 45},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.26754/ojs\_misc/mj.20129259},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20129259}
}

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