Register Variation in Word-formation Processes: The Development of -ityand -nessin Early Modern English

Abstract

This paper traces the development of two roughly synonymous nominalizing suffixesduring the Early Modern English period, the Romance -ityand the native -ness. The aim is to assess whether these suffixes were favored in particular registers or followed similar paths of development, and to ascertain whether the ongoing processes of standardization and vernacularization may have affected their diachronic evolution. To this purpose, the type frequencies and rates of aggregation of new types of the two suffixes were analyzed in seventeen different registersdistributed along the formal-informal and the speech-written continua.Results indicate that -nesstends to lose ground in favor of -itybetween the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries,a change which seems to have begun informal written registersand spread towards ‘oral’ ones,probably aided by a general trend inwritten registers for theadoption ofa more learned and literate style during the eighteenth century.