DD's right that it goes back farther.  We do tend to talk about Old English as if it was some sort of starting point when in fact it was merely the insular development of several dialects of West Germanic, and there was, of course, strong Old Norse influence, especially in the Danelaw, the north of England, after 800AD.  But the Latin reference probably is not related, except in the sense that both Latin and Germanic were inflected languages with rich derivational morphology.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of DD Farms
Sent: 2008-05-30 21:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Lonely Morphology

At 06:18 30/05/2008, Linda Di Desidero wrote:
>I imagine that -ly ending for modifiers derives from the Germanic
>--lich or the English --like. I'll bet that Herb or Bill can provide
>a more detailed answer.

DD: I suspect it goes back a bit further than that. Consider Latin,
where the adjective latina has the adverb, latine. As in English, not
across the board, though. American heritage Dictionary suggests,
"[Middle English -li, from Old English -l c (influenced by Old Norse
-ligr); see l k- in Indo-European roots.] " Where the blank is an i
with a macron.

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