The Verbal Suffix -ettan in Old English

Abstract

Jespersen has pointed out that 'English is very poor in frequentative verbs, especially in such as have corresponding non-frequentative verbs. He is referring, of course, to Modern English, and goes on to say that there are various other, somewhat more analytic means of expressing the plural of the verbal idea. In Old English, on the contrary, iteration or repetition was much more frequently expressed by means of formal devices. A formation with -1is found in a number of verbs, such as br.Tclian 'to cackle', citelian 'to tickle', brastlian 'to rustle', whereas many others, including floterian, flicerian, and tealtrian 'to totter', employ an -rstem. For the most part, however, such verbs are formed either from nouns or from adjectives and, as Jespersen indicates, corresponding non-frequentative verbs are not to be found. There does exist in Old English, however, one group of verbal derivatives which may be characterized in part, at least, as frequentative. These are the verbs with the suffix -ettan. This suffix developed from Gmc. -atjan, possibly cognate with Gk. -arw, based upon the IE noun suffix -d-.2 The relatively infrequent occurrence of these verbs in Indo-European branches other than the Germanic need not concern us here. Gothic, too, has few instances of such verbs, but in OHG this group, with the suffix -azzen, later -ezzen, became very widespread, particularly in the upper dialects.3 In general it may be said that the -ettan verbs in Old English have never been subjected to an exhaustive analysis. Schuldt, in his treatment of the weak verb in Old English, collected about fifty of them (a few of dubious authenticity), quoted Wilmanns to the effect that they were often intensive or iterative, and there let the matter drop.4 They were mentioned again by Brilioth in an article on intensive and iterative verbs in the English language as a whole, but the scope of his work was so broad that he could not afford to give them much attention.5 Today, when they are treated at all in the current grammars of Old English, they are labelled merely as intensives and passed over with little consideration.6