Several of my arguments in this book rely on details in the linguistic form and history of ælf. Although ælf is mostly regular in its development in Old English, it was affected by a number of sound-changes, some of whose details have been the subject of debate, and this has led to frequent misunderstandings and misreportings. Fortunately, the relevant processes are clear enough for present purposes. As both an aid to the reader unfamiliar with linguistics or the history of Old English, and to the informed reader faced with mistaken accounts, I include here a history of elf up to early Modern English.

The expected, regular sound-changes which ælf must have undergone according to standard accounts of Old English phonology are laid out as Figure 7. I use the International Phonetic Alphabet, except that as the phonetic value of the West Saxon spelling <ie> is unclear, I simply repeat the spelling where it is required.

Reconstructing lost forms

As Figure 7 shows, we must reconstruct the etymon of ælf as the long-stemmed masculine i-stem */AlBi-z/. The meanings of this statement and the underlying evidence are:

Masculine: this is a largely arbitrary grammatical category. Ælf is never, in Old English, coupled with a determiner or adjective which might corroborate its gender.