Re: Plural Problems

[Padraic Brown <agricola@wam.umd.edu>]

On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> At 12:49 5/11/97, Padraic Brown wrote:
> >On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Andrew Smith wrote:
> 
> 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.

Point taken.  Could Brithenig borrow -n adjectives somehow?  Especially
being in close proximity to the English; possibly in the same way English
has borrowed some bits of Irish grammar.

> 
> 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).

Keep in mind that 'Welsh' does not exist.  The language or dialect that in
the real world became 'Welsh' in this other world either died out or
coevolved with Latin into Proto Insular Romance 1500 years ago, or
somewhere thereabouts.  Welsh can be handy for vocabulary acquisition and
picking up interesting bits, but should not be too heavily relied upon. 

> 
> 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.

Quite so.  With few real -n stem adjectives in Latin (plenty of -nt-,
though) and none in Celtic that I am aware of, I don't think such a one
step spread could be argued for in adjectives.

> 
> 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,

I haven't thought much about pronominal etymology and the actual reasons
_why_ they lenite.  There's nothing in the list about personal pronouns
causing lenition. If ys and sa are derived of Latin, then I suppose they
could come either from hic-ipse/haec-ipse or ipse/ipsa or is/ea (or ipsa). 
(I'm not quite sure how to get rid of the c's and p's just yet.)  As far
as lenition is concerned, I simply assumed that Andrew, the god of
language, clicked his fingers and said 'fiat lenitionem!', and there was
lenition, and it was good (if devious).

It's pretty clear that etymology and a good understanding of mutations
will be required. 

> 
> Ray.
> 

Padraic.