Re: nu alltr e gw alltr?

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

At 6:07 pm +1300 15/11/98, Andrew Smith wrote:
>I'm not sure where Ray got the rule that germinated consonants don't
                                            ^
geminated, I think :)

>undergo spirant mutation because my own impression from my readings is
>that unvoiced consonant clusters became unvoiced fricatives in Brythonic
>languages.  According to Language and History in Early Britain; pp, tt, cc
>> f, th, ch in mid or later sixth century, so the verb appellare (to
>appeal, to be called or named) becomes aphellare (NBr affellar).

OOPS!! Amnesia must be setting in   :=(

I was basing my assumptions on Romance where single medial voiceless
plosives become voiced (and in old French then became voiced fricatives),
whereas geminated voiceless plosives remain voiceless, e.g.
patre --> Sp. padre, It. padre, O.Fr /p&Dre/ (mod.Fr. pe`re)
quattro --> Sp. cuatro, It. quatro, Fr.quatre

I'd forgotten that Brithenig departed from its sisters here and had 'cathr'
and not *catr.   Indeed, I should've remembered the name of the language
itself 'Brithenig' <-- brittanic-  !

I'd forgotten the Brittonic shift of geminated voiceless plosives; and I
believe we even discussed this many moons ago.

>Keeping
>in mind the conservative nature of Brithenig I still suggest that the
>assimilated consonant of a(d) could have resulted in spirant mutation
>after the preposition _a_ (ad casam > /ak'kasa/ > /axas/ > *a chas).

Indeed, as it stands at the moment Brithenig is not being consistent.  Most
assuredly if '/'kwatro' --> 'cathr' and '/brit'tanika/ --> 'Brithenig' then
/ak'kasa/ must become 'a chas'.

Otherwise if 'a cas' is retained then Brithenig should follow its sister
tongues and reinstate 'catr' and, of course, rename itself 'Britenig' ;)

I guess it's a bit late to change the name of the language!  No, we've all
accepted the change of geminated voiceless plosives to voicless fricatives.
My apologies for fogetting this.  Yes, 'a chas' it must be if we are to be
consistent.

I think the other thing that helped the amnesia was that the Welsh spirant
muatation is the result only of the loss of preceeding /s/.  I guess it's
only an accident of linguistic development that we have no examples of
initial spirant mutation which developed from plosive gemination.

But I recall that Italian has other prepositions which cause initial
consonant gemination.  Are there, therefore, other Brithenig prepositions
which should cause spirant mutation?

>
>My thoughts on the indefinate plural is that the only other Romance
>language that has lost final -s, French, uses _des_ to mark indefinite
>plurals rather than *unes in contrast to the other western Romance
>languages (I'm not sure of Romanian).

Italian surely does not use a plural of 'uno'.  It does have partitive
articles in both singular and plural, but the plural is not obligatory as
it is in modern French IIRC.

Romanian has a genitive-dative plural of the indefinite article 'un',
namely 'unor', but the nom.-acc. is not found.  If one wants to mark the
nom.-acc. plural as indefinite then 'niSte' (some) is used (S is written
s-cedilla); I don't know the etymology of 'niSte'.

>I don't think it is marked with
>alch, which in my mind is restricted mostly to indefinite pronouns.
>Possibly alchyn (di) but I will have to go check how Welsh constructs the
>indefinite plural.

No it is not. But remember, Welsh has no _singular_ indefinite article
either.  In both the singular & plural the indefinite noun is simply marked
by the absence of the definite article (and nouns that are onviously
definite, e.g. proper names, do not have any article).

Breton is the only modern Celticlang to have developed a distinct
indefinite article. But all the Romancelangs also have it, so I think
Brithenig would almost certainly have developed one also.

I think with the loss of final /s/, there would have been, as in French, a
development of another way of showing plural.  It seems to me the most
likely scenarios would've been:
either (a) the developnment of a different plural suffix, and this was
discussed here several months ago;
or (b) a development of the partitive article in a manner similar to French.


>Thanks to the Browns for bringing the disjunctives back to my attention.

You're welcome :)

>I am now wondering if I need to write up forms such as *eofui or *nunu
>as emphatic pronouns.

Not 'nunu' - it's the name of an animated vaccum cleaner on a popular
children's TV series here  ;)

Ray.