The German suffixes -en/-igen serve to build a verb out of a noun or an adjective as in Arbeit ‚work’ – arbeiten ‚to work’, reif ‚ripe’ – reifen ‚to ripen’, Pein ‚torment’ – peinigen ‚to torment’, rein ‚pure’ – reinigen ‚to clean’. In many cases, however, this is only possible with a preverb, as langsam ‚slow’ – *langsamen – verlangsamen ‚to slow down’, Brille ‚spectacle’ – *brillen – bebrillen ‚to bespectacle’. By using the notion of unification developed in Construction Morphology, verbs such as verlangsamen or bebrillen above can be accounted for as a direct derivation from a noun or an adjective if one assumes the existence of a ‚unified’ word formation pattern [P-[[N/A]-en]V] as a fusion of [[N/A]-en]V and P-[V]. Since the Middle High German period, the use of -igen as a functionally equivalent to -en can be seen increasingly. This suffix is also characterizable as a unification of two conversion patterns, one with the adjectivizing suffix -ig and the other with the verbalizing -en. This process should be called ‚morphological reanalysis’ for the adjectivizing function of -ig is invalidated here. The development of ‚unified’ word-formation-patterns [P-[[N/A]-en]V] as well as the pattern with -igen can be ascertained first in Middle High German.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.