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GERMAN -MANN AND -MENSCH, AND THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN ENGLISH Otto Hietsch See Notes, p. 91, for abbreviations. Amongst the treasured reminders of my postgraduate years in England, I cherish a sizable sheaf of manuscript pages, now yellow with age. They are in the hand of Sir William Craigie, that venerable pioneer of lexicographical study. The neat and delicate lines trace out the beginnings of a new venture. Sir William was making a record of the nominal compounds in Beowulf, they are arrayed under the banners of various headwords, each of which, as a glance will show, is a second element of composition. Alas, work on the project was never completed, nor are the present generation of Anglo-Saxonists aware of the particular line of argument Sir William had in mind when he set out to re-list the Beowulf compound vocabulary. Still, if one pauses a moment, a general clue to his thinking may be found in an anecdote of Sir William's. Long retired from his academic duties, yet spirited and unbowed by age, Sir William, on one occasion in the late forties, prefaced a guest lecture at King's College, University of Durham, with the following story: One day a Highland farmer, down to Edinburgh on business, entered the City Library to ask for a certain book. While the librarian was away rummaging among the shelves, the visitor noticed a large dictionary lying open on the desk. The Highlander began to leaf through its pages, desultorily at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm. When the librarian came back, his opinion was made up. "This yon book," he blurted out in unsophisticated glee, "is not half interesting, but frightfully disconneckit!" 66 Otto Hietsch67 Dictionaries being what they are, this piece of rustic criticism, if criticism it be, will always have a point to make. But, nevertheless, "disconnectedness" could be tempered in various ways—for instance, by careful cross-referencing, or by inserting, at opportune junctures, summary boxes bringing together synonyms, antonyms, and other vocabulary features. Thus we can cut across and relieve the tedium of mechanical alphabetic listing, otherwise so useful. Am I being fanciful in seeing a common strain in Sir William's telling the anecdote and then in fact starting a collection of compounds arranged according to, curiously, the second element? I hope not. Some thirty-five years have passed since my meeting with this revered champion of our "gentle art" and since I discovered, during the labors of a postgraduate thesis, that a systematic ordering of second compound elements can lead to tangible results. Let us, therefore, for the purpose of this brief paper, glance back at old facts and experiences whilst shifting the scene from the past to the present. The first element in simple compounds, in all Germanic languages, usually functions as semantic qualifier 'of the other element, or base word; ponderously expressed, then, the former is the determinant, the latter the determinatum. First elements as a rule convey denotation rather than connotation. This is true whatever type of nominal compound is formed; the categories for English have been variously defined, e.g., subject-verb ('bee-sting', 'copycat'), resemblance ('apron stage', 'ghost town'), locative-time ('night train', 'afternoon tea'). Occasionally, though, the first element has some emotive slant—for instance, the caressing diminutive in 'pussy-cat'. The role played by second elements is different and more complex. Not only do they furnish the semantic base that is sharply restricted by the first element; they may in fact also superimpose some connotational shading, in other words, "an emotive or affective component additional to its central meaning" —perhaps a touch of irony or contempt. Here, too, there are exceptions. The second element -werk in German Laubwerk and Mauerwerk is a mere abstract generality; clearly, first elements Laub- and Mauer- are the semantic kernels of 68German -Mann and -Mensch their respective compounds. Nevertheless, evidence can easily be found in both English and German where the second element gives a subtle twist of meaning to the compound. In English, for instance, there is a wide variety of ways of referring to a male person who works at the London Foreign Office: 'Foreign Office chap' (the implication is almost...

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