The suffix -ly is from lik, which was a substantive meaning ‘form, appearance, body’ (‘a dead body’ in Dan. lig, E. lich in lichgate); manlik thus is ‘having the form or appearance of a man’; the adjective like originally was ge-lic ‘having the same appearance with’ (as in Lat. con-form-is). In compounds -lik was shortened into -ly: in some cases we still have competing forms like gentlemanlike and gentlemanly. The ending was, and is still, used extensively in adjectives; if it is now also used to turn adjectives into adverbs, as in truthful-ly, luxurious-ly, this is a consequence of the two OE. forms, adj. -lic and adv. -lice, having phonetically fallen together.
It may perhaps be doubtful whether the G. suffix -bar (OHG. -bari, OE. bære) was ever really an independent word, but its connexion with the verb beran, E. bear, cannot be doubted: fruchtbar is what bears fruit (cf. OE. æppelbære ‘bearing apples’), but the connexion was later loosened, and such adjectives as ehrbar, kostbar, offenbar have little or nothing left of the original meaning of the suffix. The two prefixes in our examples, un- and be-, are differentiated forms of the old negative ne and the preposition by, and the only affix in our two long words which is thus left unexplained is -th, which makes true into truth and is found also in length, health, etc.
XIX.—§ 9. Flexional Endings.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that some at any rate of our suffixes and prefixes go back to independent words which have been more or less weakened to become derivative formatives. But does the same hold good with those endings which we are accustomed to term flexional endings? The answer certainly must be in the affirmative with regard to some endings.
Thus the Scandinavian passive originates in a coalescence of the active verb and the pronoun sik: Old Norse (þeir) finna sik (‘they find themselves’ or ‘each other’), gradually becomes one word (þeir) finnask, later finnast, finnaz, Swedish (de) finnas, Dan. (de) findes ‘they are found.’ In Old Icelandic the pronoun is still to some extent felt as such, though formally an indistinguishable part of the verb; thus combinations like the following are very frequent: Bolli kvaz þessu ráða vilja = kvað sik vilja; “Bolli dixit se velle: B. said that he would have his own way” (Laxd. 55). In Danish a distinction can sometimes be made between a reflexive and a purely passive employment: de slås with a short vowel is ‘they fight (one another),’ but with a long vowel ‘they are beaten.’ A similar coalescence is taking place in Russian, where sja ‘himself’ (myself, etc.) dwindles down to a suffixed s: kazalos ‘it showed itself, turned out.’
A similar case is the Romanic future: It. finiro, Sp. finire, Fr. finirai, from finire habeo (finir ho, etc.), originally ‘I have to finish.’ Before the coalescence was complete, it was possible to insert a pronoun, Old Sp. cantar-te-hé ‘I shall sing to you.’
A third case in point is the suffixed definite article, if we are allowed to consider that as a kind of flexion: Old Norse mannenn (manninn) accusative ‘the man,’ landet (landit) ‘the land’; Dan. manden, landet, from mann, land + the demonstrative pronoun enn, neuter et. Rumanian domnul ‘the lord,’ from Lat. dominu(m) illu(m), is another example.
XIX.—§ 10. Validity of the Theory.
Now, does this kind of explanation admit of universal application—in other words, were all our derivative affixes and flexional endings originally independent words before they were ‘glued’ to or fused with the main word? This has been the prevalent, one might almost say the orthodox, view of all the leading linguists, who may be mustered in formidable array in defence of the agglutination theory.[92]
Against the universality of this origin for formatives I adduced in my former work (1894, p. 66 f., cf. Kasus, 1891, p. 36) four reasons, which I shall here restate in a different order and in a fuller form.