What does āgen mean in the Lindisfarne Gospels?
Aldred’s interlinear glosses added to the Latin text of the Lindisfarne Gospels have undoubtedly an inestimable
value as one of the most substantial representatives of late Old Northumbrian. Therefore, they have been an object of study both
as a source of information on this Old English variety and on the typological changes affecting Middle English. Starting from the
assumption that glosses have an ancillary function with respect to the Latin text they accompany, I have argued in the present
paper that they can make a significant contribution to delineating the history and meaning of a word inasmuch as glossators could
have chosen vernacular words according to their core meaning. The particular case of the verbs of possession āgan
and the forms derived from it, including the past participle āgen, will be used in the following discussion of
the role of glosses: the investigation of their meaning in the Lindisfarne Gospels will help us understand the development of
āgen into the PDE attributive intensifier own.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1PDE own as attributive intensifier
- 2.What āgen is in OE
- 3.The family of words etymologically related to āgen
- 4.
Āgan and its lexical family in the Lindisfarne Gospels
- 4.1Verbs for possideo
- 4.2When and how āgan occurs
- 4.3The function of āgen
- 5.What interlinear glosses can add to the grammaticalization hypothesis about the development of own
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References