Analogical Changes in the Nominal Morphology of Owun’s gloss to the Rushworth Gospels

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a quantitative study of the genitive and nominative/accusative plural inflections in Owun’s gloss (Rushworth2) to the Rushworth Gospels in comparison with Aldred’s gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels. It focuses on three inter-paradigmatic analogical changes attested in Rushworth2: (1) the extension of genitive singular -es from the a-stems to other noun classes, (2) the spread of nominative/accusative plural -as from masculine a-stems to neuter a-stems and other declensions and (3) the extension of genitive plural -ena from the weak nouns to a-stems. The main aim of this article is to establish the scale on which these analogical changes are found in Rushworth2. The results are compared with those obtained in the study of Lindisfarne to determine the degree of similarity between the two glosses with regard to these processes and shed light on the question of whether Owun copied from Aldred or not.