Morphological complexity, recursiveness and templates in the formation of Old English nouns

Abstract

The aim of this article is to contribute to the study of the formation of Old English nouns by analysing the morphological complexity and recursiveness that arise in affixal processes of noun formation. On the theoretical side, this article discusses the implications of the description of noun complexity for the morphological template of Old English. The analysis shows that the formation of nouns by means of affixation in Old English is relatively opaque, as well as considerably recursive. It also identifies more separable and less separable prefixes and allows for the assignment of template positions to affixes involved in noun formation. The conclusion is reached that in order to enrich the morphological template of the Layered Structure of the Word with information on pre-derivational inflection, ablaut and phonological conditioning, it is necessary either to list formal conditions in the lexicon or to state them in a productive way.