Germanic affixoids in Jacob Grimm

Summary

Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) is one of the best-known German linguists of the early nineteenth-century. His influential volume, Deutsche Grammatik (

, part two), deals with German word-formation. That work comments on the development of derivational affixes from former words, and thus contributes to affixoid studies. Much current work on affixoids utilizes criteria to determine whether an affixoid is on hand, and this paper thus uses Stevens’ work as a backdrop to situate Grimm’s related theoretical claims. A number of Grimm’s claims support current linguistic theory on affixoids, and several claims appear to offer fruitful insights for further investigation.