Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to provide a detailed characterization of one of the Old English nominal suffixes: -els and to present a diachronic overview of its development from Proto-Germanic to Early Middle English, including its cognates in other Germanic languages. This suffix was in Old English used to derive a plethora of deverbal masculine/ neuter nouns denoting (with only a few exceptions) concrete objects or places (e.g. cnytt-els "a knitting thread" and hȳd-els "a place of concealment") and in this period, it had no allomorphic variation.
However, already in the Early Middle English period, it ceased to exist, and its functions were taken over by other suffixes (e.g. -en). Moreover, in many cases, the suffix -els was reanalyzed as a part of the root.
This paper will attempt to look at the most possible reasons for this demise. As most of the current research into lexical productivity of Old English nominal suffixes is focused on the affixes surviving until Present-Day English, e.g. denominal suffix -dom (dōm), deadjectival suffix -ness (with various spellings), and denominal suffix -ere (with various spellings) (Kastovsky, 2008: 384), this paper tries to cover, at least partly, the understudied area by describing one of the Old English suffixes which are no longer productive.
The research is based on the Old English data from the electronic versions of Dictionary of Old English (the letters published in the online version are A-I), the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, and the Middle English data from Middle English Dictionary, and it attempts to describe the grammatical and semantic properties of the bases and derivatives of the suffix, and its productivity in Old and (Early) Middle English. Attention is also paid to the changes in the typological framework and phonological system between Old and Middle English periods and its effect on the productivity of the suffix.