1 © 2000 John Benjamins. Reprinted with permission from Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography: Selected Papers from the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium, Manchester, August 1998, ed. Coleman, Julie and Kay, Christian J., Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 194 (Amsterdam, 2000), pp. 103–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar An earlier version of this paper was read to the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, at the kind invitation of Prof. Jacek Fisiak.

2 Old English (OE) is used throughout this paper to indicate that phase of English, sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, which dates to before c. A.D.1100. It is followed by Middle English (ME), and Modern English (ModE).

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85 In spite of speculation, there is no evidence that spires were constructed in Anglo-Saxon England; see Gem, Richard, ‘Staged Timber Spires in Carolingian North-East France and Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 148 (1995), pp. 29–54 (p. 50).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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