Functions and categories of Old English affixed nouns and adjectives

Abstract

The aim of this article is to develop a frame of lexical functions and semantic categories that gives account of the change of meaning caused by the processes of prefixation and suffixation in Old English that produce nouns and adjectives. Lexical functions are inspired by structural-functional theories. Paradigmatic morphology provides the structural basis, whereas Functional Grammar (Dik, 1997a [1989], 1997b), Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008) and Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin & LaPolla, 1997; Van Valin, 2005) contribute the functional foundations of this proposal based on lexical functions. The inventory of lexical functions is classified according to a hierarchy of semantic categories and is applied to the analysis of the formation of Old English nouns and adjectives through affixation. The conclusions, on the theoretical side, insist on the compatibility of functional models that allow to create a whole and coherent proposal; on the descriptive side, they focus on the compatibility of semantic categories in the derivative processes.