The Evolution of a Definite Article in Old English: Evidence from a Filiation Formula in a Runic Inscription from Eyke, Suffolk

Abstract An Old English runic inscription on a pendant recently found in Suffolk is published here for the first time. It can be dated around the first half of the ninth century. The text is readily identifiable as a familiar maker’s formula which can be translated ‘Būdheard the son of Bilheard made this’. This had been copied in a slightly bungled manner from a runographically sophisticated exemplar. The maker is identified in a filiation formula that has a determiner se between his name and a patronymic in ‑ing . The use of se in noun phrases in earlier Old English, and the gradual development of a definite article, are reviewed, primarily in terms of Traditional Grammar but with reference to other models within Linguistics. The development of definite articles was an areal phenomenon of western, central and southern Europe, largely within the ‘long’ Middle Ages of c . AD 400–1500. The evidence of the Eyke inscription is exceptionally important, both for English philology and within the context of comparative European Historical Linguistics. It is shown that in Old English the determiner se was consistently used to mark the head noun in expanded noun phrases, and that its function as a definite article appears to have evolved from this role.