Simplification in Derivational Morphology in the Lindisfarne Gloss

Abstract

The language of the English gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels bears witness to early morphological simplification in the late Northumbrian dialect compared to other Old English varieties. Cases of merger in the nominal inflection have already been widely noted. Morphological syncretism in the area of deriva-tion has attracted less attention, although here too variation with respect to other Old English dialects is to be expected. The aim of this paper is to establish how the language of the Lindisfarne gloss differs from that of other Old English texts concerning the degree of syncretism of the causative jan-formation. To that end, all deverbal jan-pairs (base and derivative) in the gloss have been identified, and the syntactic valency and meaning of each member of the pair have been assessed by studying each attestation individually. The main conclusion reached is that the language of the Lindisfarne gloss does not show more innovative traits than that of other Old English texts in the use of the causative formation. This points to derivational morphology behaving differently from inflectional morphology with respect to morphological loss in Old Northumbrian.