Suffixoidal Formations in Old English

This paper examines nine Old English bound morphemes (-bora, -dōm, -hād, -lāc, -ræden(n); -bǣre, -cund, -fæst, -ful(l)) from the perspective of Construction Morphology (CxM). It is observed that the nine bound morphemes have suffixoidal properties of exhibiting bound (special or abstract) meanings when embedded in compounds. Different from the previous study by Kim (2017) that OE borderline morphemes are on the morphological cline between FWs and suffixes with varied degrees, this paper within CxM views that the formations with the bound morphemes are ‘Constructional Idioms’ (CIs) with specific FORMs and MEANINGs, and suggests that the OE CIs with the bound morphemes can best be seen as the subsets of OE prototypical compounds. The following are main results and arguments of this study, all of which are based on the theoretical advantages of CxM: i) by means of abstract subschemas, the formal and semantic properties of OE CIs with the nine morphemes ([Xi-bora/-dōm/-hād/-lāc/-ræden(n)j]Nk; [Xi-bǣre/-cund/-fæst/-ful(l)j]Ak) have been clearly represented; ii) it has been assumed that OE lexicon is hierarchically organized with varied levels of abstractness; CIs as the subsets of compounds are dominated by OE prototypical compounds on the higher node; iii) since the nine OE bound morphemes are part of compounds, they do not need to count as the intermediate category of ‘Suffixoids’; iv) this article has suggested that OE CIs with the nine bound morphemes are developed through ‘Constructionalization’, rather than grammaticalization or lexicalization.