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The Northumbrian Old English glosses
Edited by Elly van Gelderen
[NOWELE 72:2] 2019
► pp. 245–272

What does āgen mean in the Lindisfarne Gospels?

| University of Florence

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
Published online: 10 December 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.00029.vez
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