Volume 64, Issue 1 -

The Latin suffix ‑ tor was purely agentive, while its Romance counterparts, in the standard languages, all also have an instrumental, and some additionally a locative meaning. Traditionally, this state of affairs has been attributed to a meaning extension during the Proto-Romance stage, when instruments are said to have been conceptualized metaphorically as agents. It is the aim of this paper to show that there has never been any such meaning extension. It will be argued that the multifunctionality of Romance ‑tor is due instead to a combination of factors such as sound change, borrowing, ellipsis, and analogy.

The nominal suffix ‑ er is polysemous in contemporary German. It is not only used for the formation of terms designating persons ( Maler ‘artist’) but also animals ( Würger ‘shrike’), objects ( Entsafter ‘juicer’) and events ( Seufzer ‘sigh’). Until now, there has been little research into the way this polysemy has developed in the course of German language history. The central theme of this article is the reconstruction of its origin and development from Old High German onwards. It will be demonstrated that the various meanings of ‑ er occur as a result of different strands of development, for which both language contact phenomena and semantic change have been decisive.

In this paper, agent polysemy in German will be discussed in the framework of lexical semantics as outlined in Lieber (2004). I will show that Lieber’s explanation of agent polysemy works fine for German ‑ er derivation as far as agent, instrument and patient nouns are concerned. It also helps us to understand differences in frequency and productivity of the different semantic groups. However, I will argue that Lieber’s framework is not yet elaborate enough to account for German event derivatives such as Hüpfer ‘hop’.

This study addresses Agent polysemy diachronically, synchronically, and contrastively. It examines the semantic structure of three French agentive formations, [VN/A] N/A compounds, and derivations with ‑ eur and ‑ ant . The semantics of four Swedish agentive formations which correspond to French [VN/A] N/A compounds are also studied. My results suggest that the polysemy of Agent is not uniformly hierarchically structured, with the Agent on top, for different agentive formations. They do not confirm that semantic extension emanates from the Agent. Instead, they speak in favour of blocking as the most plausible explanation for Agent polysemy and meaning extension.

The present paper gives an historical account of agent noun formations in ‑mon‑ in Old and Middle Irish, based on the Proto-Indo-European prehistory of this suffix. The patterning of agent nouns in ‑ mon ‑ in Irish points to a polysemy already inherited from the originally adjectival Proto-Indo-European derivates denoting affiliation. This is supported also by polysemous nominalizations in Ancient Greek. Formations in ‑ mon ‑, originally deverbal in Proto-Indo-European, came to be formally enlarged and functionally reinterpreted in Early Celtic, thus leading to the polysemy in Irish, with both deverbal and denominal ‑ mon ‑formations designating professions, occupations and functions as well as instruments and even animals.

Agentive formations in Slavic languages employ a vast amount of suffixes, some of which are common to all individual Slavic languages, while others are productive (or have evolved) only in particular regions of the Slavic-speaking area. This contribution presents examples of the most characteristic features of agentive formations across Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic as a representative of a diachronically earlier language state. In order to assess the specific setting of polysemy of agentive formations, attention focuses on enhancing factors such as multifunctionality, i.e., applicability of one and the same suffix to verbal and nominal (optionally including adjectival) bases.