*-ārī

Reconstruction

Ringe and Taylor reconstruct a noun-forming suffix *-ārī for Proto-West Germanic.^[1]

Etymology

It is plainly borrowed from Latin -ārius;^[1] Gothic borrowed the Latin suffix independently.^[1] The suffix was not borrowed by itself: words containing it were borrowed together with the words they were derived from, and learners then extracted *-ārī from such pairs and used it productively, as with *munitārī "minter" from monētārius beside *munit from monēta (“coin”).^[1] Wiktionary instead names Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz, which it says is usually held to be borrowed from the Latin suffix, or at least influenced by it.^[2]

Morphology

It forms masculine ja-stem nouns.^[3][4] In the early West Germanic languages it is usually added to nouns and mostly denotes a profession, as in Latin; its great productivity later is largely a parallel development of the separate languages.^[1]

Evidence

Old Saxon has -eri, with shortening and i-umlaut, Old High German -āri, and Old English and Old Frisian -ere and -ere, through *-ǣri, as in Old English cȳþere (“witness, martyr”) and Old Frisian kēthere, the title of a court official.^[5] The oldest English glosses still have -eri, as in tebleri "gambler" in the Erfurt Glossary, later -ere;^[6] the vowel of the suffix was never syncopated in Old English.^[7] Old Saxon has fiskari (“fisherman”) beside dōperi (“baptist”), where the long vowel was shortened.^[8] Berr takes the -ari of the Old Saxon word to be the Latin suffix, replacing a Germanic suffix *-ja-.^[9]

Meanings

1. forming agent nouns, especially names of occupations, from nouns^[1][10]

Derivatives

• *munitārī "minter, money changer", borrowed from Latin.^[1]
• *bōkārī "scribe", a typical early example.^[1]
• *fiskārī "fisherman", which Wiktionary reconstructs.^[10]

Reflexes

• Old English: -ere^[5], as in bōcere (“scribe”)^[3]
• Old Frisian: -ere^[5], as in kēthere (“court official”)^[11]
• Old Saxon: -eri, -ari^[5][8], as in fiskari (“fisherman”)^[9]
• Old High German: -āri^[5], as in buohhāri (“scribe”)^[12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 138
2. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. *-ārijaz
3. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. bōcere
4. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altsächsisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. fiskāri
5. ^ a b c d e Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 150
6. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 334
7. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 298
8. ^ a b Fulk, R. D. (2018), A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages, Studies in Germanic Linguistics 3, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, p. 95
9. ^ a b Berr, Samuel (1971), An Etymological Glossary to the Old Saxon Heliand, Berne / Frankfurt: Herbert Lang, p. 129
10. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. *-ārī
11. ^ Hofmann, Dietrich; Popkema, Anne Tjerk (2008), Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. s.v. kēthere
12. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. buohhāri