Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/81

II.] suffix may be nothing more than a metamorphosis of our common adjective like; and a reference to the oldest Germanic dialect, the Mœso-Gothic, puts the case beyond all question; for there we find the suffix and the independent adjective to be in all respects the same, and the derivatives formed with the suffix to be as evident compounds with the adjective as are our own godlike, childlike, and so on. Words thus composed are common in all the Germanic tongues; but we who speak English have given the same suffix a further modification of meaning, and an extension of application, which belong to it nowhere else. In our usage it is an adverbial suffix, by which any adjective whatever may be converted into an adverb, as in truly, badly, fearfully, fearlessly. In the old Anglo-Saxon, such adverbs were oblique cases of adjectives in lic, and so, of course, were derived only from adjectives formed by this ending; the full adverbial suffix was lice, the e being a case-termination: instances are ânlîce, 'only, singularly,' from ânlîc, 'sole, singular,' literally 'one-like;' leôflîce, 'lovelily,' from leôflîc, 'lovely.' We moderns, now, have suffered the ending to go out of use as one forming adjectives, only retaining the adjectives so formed which we have inherited from the ancient time; but we have taken it up in its adverbial application, and, ignoring both its original character and its former limitation to a single class of adjectives, apply it with unrestricted freedom in making an adverb from any adjective we choose; while, at the same time, we have mutilated its form, casting off as unnecessary the vowel ending, along with the consonant to which it was appended. The history of this adverbial suffix is worthy of special notice, inasmuch as the suffix itself is the latest addition which our grammatical system has gained in the synthetic way, and as its elaboration has taken place during the period when the growth of our language is illustrated by contemporary documents. The successive steps were clearly as follows: the adjective like was first added to a number of nouns, forming a considerable class of adjective compounds, like those now formed by us with full; then, like the latter word, it lost in a measure the consciousness of its origin, and was