This book is about the integration into English of the five nominal suffixes -ment -ance
-ation -age and -al which entered Middle English via borrowings from French and which now
form abstract nouns by attaching themselves to various base categories as in cord cordage or
adjust adjustment. The possibility is considered that each suffix might individually affect the
general semantic profile of nouns which it forms. A sample of first attributions from the
Middle English Dictionary is analysed for each suffix in order to examine biases in suffixes
towards certain semantic areas. It is argued that such biases exist both in real-world
semantics such as the choice of bases with moral or practical meanings and in distinct
aspects of the shared core meaning of action or collectivity expressed by the derived deverbal
or denominal nouns. The results for the ME database are then compared with the use of words in
the same suffixes across a selection of works from Shakespeare. In this way it can be shown how
such tendencies may persist or change over time.
