Verbal prefixes in Old Northumbrian

Abstract

Abstract In late Old English dialects, adverbial elements are frequently morphologically ambiguous (independent words, clitics, verbal prefixes, etc.), and an important facet of the proper treatment of these items is the quality of source-data in different texts. This paper examines the usage of three adverbial/prepositional elements in the Northumbrian Lindisfarne Glosses: eft ‘again, after’, ymb ‘around’, and ofer ‘over’. Skeat (1871–87), whose transcription of the original manuscript is the primary reference for research on the Glosses, frequently transcribes these items as prefixes, alongside other OE prefixes like ge-, a-, for-, and be-. However, Skeat also deviates from this pattern in many cases, leaving their proper analysis uncertain. Nevertheless, various works (e.g., Cook 1894; Bosworth 2011), have indeed taken these items to be prefixes. I follow Fernández-Cuesta (2016) in revisiting the original Lindisfarne manuscript to determine the correct treatment of these items, concluding that eft and ofer should not be analyzed as prefixes in the manuscript, while ymb should have prefix status.