Re: Plural Problems

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@macline.co.uk>]

At 12:49 5/11/97, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Andrew Smith wrote:
>
>> I have started anotating the Brithenig homepage and started discovering
>> conundrums about plural marking so I have decided to present my questions
>> to the list and see what people think before I write up the final form:
>>
>> Should adjectives have plural marking? (maybe...but I haven't convinced
>> myself.  Are there any examples of n-plurals among adjectives?)
>
>Germanic languages (more or less except English, anymore) have -n class
>adjectival declension.  It's not used to mark plural, but to differentiate
>strong from weak forms, thus: [Goth.] blindai mans = blind men as opposed
>to thai blindans mans = the blind men.  In Germanic, the weak adj. (-n
>class) is used with def. art. and demonst. pron.  Otherwise, most IE
>languages that I know of have plural adj.: [Cast.] perro bueno/perros
>buenos; [Gk.] ho kuon agathos/hoi kunes agathoi; [Lat.] canis bonus/canes
>boni; etc.

I don't think Germanic weak/ strong adjectives are relevant to this
question.  That IE langs all _had_ declinable adjectives is indisputable.
But the drift in the Brittonic langs seems to be towards indeclinable
adjectives as in modern English.

Modern Welsh has almost eliminated any plurality marking in adjectives.
There are a very few, e.g. ifanc/ ifainc (young), arall/ eraill (other),
that are still used, and a few others which are normally indeclinable, e.g.
du (black) do have a plural form in set expressions, e.g. mwyar duon
(blackberries) - cf: mwyar du ( black berries).

Recal that the spread of the -n ending in nouns resulted from the loss of
the original plural -s --> h --> zero.  Similar changes would have affected
the adjectives; but it seems to me extremely unlikely that there would've
been the same drive to develop an alternative way to mark plurality in
adjectives.  I have no doubt that they would happily have become
indeclinable.

>
>The Dumnonian dialects of Brithenig do not distinguish plural adjectives:
>[K.] ill boun ky/y boun kuon; [D.] elo bu~ ca'/els bu~ ca'n.
>
>>
>> Should sa and ys have plural forms (*san and *ysson/son.  It's an
>> option...maybe???)
>
>!!ESPERANTO ALERT!!  Sticking "n"s on everything will make Brithenig sound
>too contrived, in my opinion.  It's bad enough that ALL nouns have the
>same plural (I can't complain overmuch, after all, English has leveled
>nearly all plurals to -(e)s!);

This has worried me a little, but I think it's not an improbable development.

>but these are pronouns, and we probably
>should come up with something rather more "pronounish".

Here I agree 100%.  It seems to me highly unlikely that the -n development
would've extended to pronouns at all.

Presumably the plural ys & sa cause spirant mutation due to the lost h <--
s.  That might be enough, especially as verb endings also show a different,
cf the Dumnonian forms below:

>Besides verbal endings, the Dumnonian Kernu differentiates with
>asperation:
>        ys cant         ys chantont
>        sa gant         sa chantont
>

>>
>> Yn is a numeral, an indefinate article - both singular and plural - and a
>> nominal marker for adjectives.  When should it be marked, or not, as a
>> plural?  (I'm undecided)

If nouns are marked for plural, this less of a problem.  Indeed, yn needn't
change for the plural, tho I think it should cause spirant mutation.

Ray.