Re: Plural Problems

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

At 16:11 5/11/97, Padraic Brown wrote:
[......]
>Point taken.  Could Brithenig borrow -n adjectives somehow?
Yep - but I think the adj. would've been borrowed without the Old Eng. case
endings.

>Especially
>being in close proximity to the English; possibly in the same way English
>has borrowed some bits of Irish grammar.

Eh??  Seems unlikely to me.  The Celtic language spoken at one time from
Strathclyde (in modern Scotland - where the first written Welsh is
attested) right down the western half of modern England and into the
Devon-Cornwall peninsular was an early form of Welsh.  The 'Scotti' from
Ireland invaded Scotland in the 6th cent. but their lang. can hardly have
affected English.  And relation between later England & Ireland were hardly
likely to induce English to take note of the Irish language.

The progessive or continuous tenses in English are IMO likely to be
influenced by native Celtic practice, but the influence must be Brittonic.
Apart from peculiarities in AngloIrish which are not found elsewhere, I can
think of no bits of Irish grammar in 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).
>
>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.

I know.  But the Celtic influence on GalloRomance is clear & developments
in Welsh I think can give a clue to what is likely to have been the
development of Brithenig.

[......]
>
>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.)

>From ipse.  The 'p' disappeared in protoRomance *isse. The pronoun
survives, e.g. in Itallian 'esso' and Spanish 'eso'.  In early Romance both
'ille' & 'isse' compete for definite article & 3rd person pronoun.  In the
end, ille won out in most places as the def. article, but Sardinian opted
for forms derived from *isse. Andrew has Brithenig do the same.

>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).

Not at all.  The mutations have been arived at in a similar way to the
actual development in Welsh.  Brithenig has four mutation.  The most common
(in all Celtic langs) is the soft mutation which in the Brittonic langs
basically means voicelss consonants get voiced & voiced plosives become
voiced continunants.  This happened when the consonant came between two
vowels & remained when later the first vowel was dropped.

He also has nasal mutation common to the Brittonic langs (and the Gaelic
ones) cased by preceding -n.

The mutation after plural ys &c. is the _spirant_ mutation which is
peculiar to the Brittonic group and was caused by the loss of a preceeding
-s which became -h before disappearing, cf, Welsh tri chi (three dogs)
where tri <--- *tris.  What Andrew has imagined - he & I discussed this
some time back - was that final -s became -h as it did in early French and
now does in Andalucian, and that the aspirate then caused the spirant
mutation of /t/ /p/ /k/ to the corresponding voiced fricative sounds.

No, not a just a fiat of Andrew's - he's thought the system out.  Indeed, I
think Andrew's done a very good job of developing a "Brittonicized" Romance
tongue in a credible way.

Ray.