ABSTRACT
In the theory of word-formation it is customary to distinguish between productive and unproductive suffixes. An example of a productive suffix is -ness, because it is possible to form new words like weariness, closeness, perverseness, etc. On the contrary -lock in wedlock is unproductive, and so is -th in width, breadth, health, for Ruskin's attempt to construct a word mth on the analogy of wealth has met with no success, and no other word with this ending seems to have come into existence for several hundred years. This is a further application of what we said above: the type adjective + -ness is still living, while wedlock and the words mentioned in -th are now formulas of a type now extinct. But when the word width originated, the type was alive. At that far-off time it was possible to add the ending, which was then something like -ipu, to any adjective. In course of time, however, the ending dwindled down to the simple sound p(th), while the vowel of the first syllable was modified, with the consequence that the suffix ceased to be productive, because it was impossible for an ordinary man, who was not trained in historical grammar, to see that the pairs long: length, broad: breadth, wide: width, deep : depth, whole: health, dear: dearth, represented one and the same type of formation. These words
were, accordingly, handed down traditionally from generation to generation as units, that is, formulas, and when the want was felt for a new 'abstract noun' (I use here provisionally the ordinary term for such words), it was no longer the ending -th that was resorted to, but -ness, because that offered no difficulty, the adjective entering unchanged into the combination.
