Re: A few more Breathanach notes

[Padraic Brown <pbrown@polaris.umuc.edu>]

I was going to reply to John, but I might as well do that here.

On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Geoff Eddy wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
> 
> > The noun form derived from a verb is not a "participle" but a "gerund".
> > Therefore, Breathanach does not have two present participles, but
> > rather a present participle and a gerund, although the gerund is not
> > inherited from the Latin gerund.
> 
> Looks like I'll have to update the page again - it looks a bit confused
> :-( Seriously, you're quite correct; there's an important difference.

Well, that took the wind outa my sails.  Where is this "gerund" derived
from if not the Latin?  It's just a matter of which (the true participle
or the gerund) Breathanach is going to use as the participle.  I don't
think both ought to be used in such an Englishy fashion, though. 

If I'm not mistaken, both Spanish and Portuguese have taken the (Lat.)
gerund and have reformed it into a "new" present participle; and have
relegated the true participial form to mere nominal status.  A sort of
role reversal where adj. becomes noun and vice versa.

> 
> > What is the meaning of "*is* and *sa* are borrowed from Brithenig"?
> 
> "Is" = "he", or "it" for masculine nouns. "Sa" = "she", or "it" for
> feminine nouns. They correspond to French "il" and "elle", or Gaelic
> "se" and "si".
> 
> > Does that mean that *there* they have been borrowed, or that Geoff
> > have borrowed them from Andrew?  The *fhoil* isn't clear.
> 
> Good question! What actually happened was that Geoff couldn't come up
> with any better pronouns of his own. 

That's kind of what I thought.  It also happens to be the reason why
Kernu's pronouns are also (and very suspicuously coincidentally) ys and
sa.

> What happened *there*, I'm not
> sure, although it might have involved the Brithenig pronouns sounding
> more attractive to Breathanach speakers (I think they'd be called
> Breathaine) than their own. I haven't yet decided.

That certainly is possible.  If English can nick pronouns from
Scandinavian, why not within the British langs?  The other possibility is
that Old British Vernacular used isse and issa for the pronouns, which
were then ground down to the is and sa (your orthography may vary) of the
modern tongues.

> 
> Oh - it should really be "foil", unless you have "la" in front of it.
> Which brings up another interesting question - if you're quoting an
> initially-mutated word outside of its mutating context, should you
> retain the mutation? Just a thought.

Only if its important to the discussion at hand.  Otherwise, the
"dictionary form" ought to be used.  I think that's probably pretty
standard amongst any linguistics group.  Then, we've just got to decide
which "dictionary form" we mean!

Padraic.