Verbal prefixes in Old Northumbrian

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)Skeat, W. W. (ed.). 1871–87. The Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 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 1894Cook, A. S. 1894. A glossary of the Old Northumbrian Gospels (Lindisfarne Gospels or Durham Book). Halle: Niemeyer.; Bosworth 2011Bosworth, J. 2011. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary online (T. N. Toller et al., eds.). <[URL]>.), have indeed taken these items to be prefixes. I follow Fernández-Cuesta (2016)Fernández Cuesta, J. 2016. Revisiting the manuscript of the Lindisfarne Gospels. In J. Fernández Cuesta & S. M. Pons-Sanz (eds.), 257–287. 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.