Re: Celtic Consonant Mutation

At 2:08 pm -0700 3/5/02, Joe wrote:
>Can you guys help me?  I'm wondering how Celtic Initial mutation happens, as
>in Cornish:
>
>mam
>mother
>
>an vam
>the mother
>
>I'm just curious as to how the mechanism works, and under what
>conditions...maybe the Bretons on this list can help :-)
OK - tho not a Breton, I'll try.  As Michael Poxon explained, the
'mutations' were once phonetically conditioned.  But that has longed past.
They are now fixed grammatically.

WELSH
In Welsh there are three mutations besides the base form: soft, nasal &
spirant mutations.

The Welsh mutations are:
Intial consonant    Soft           Nasal          Spirant
    P                B            MH /mh/         PH /f/
  pensil          ei bensil e    fy mhesil i     ei phensil hi
  (pencil)        (his pensil)   (my pensil)     (her pensil)

    T               D             NH /nh/         TH /T/
   tad            ei dad e       fy nhad i        ei thad hi
 (father)        (his father)    (my father)      (her father)

    C /k/          G              NGH /Hh/         CH /X/ [sic]
   ci             ei gi e        fy nghi i        ei chi hi
  (dog)           (his dog)      (my dog)         (her dog)

   B               F /v/          M               NO CHANGE
  brawd           ei brawd e     fy mrawd i       ei brawd hi
 (brother)      (his brother)   (my brother)     (her brother)

   D               DD /D/         N               NO CHANGE
  dant           ei ddant e      fy nant i        ei dant hi
 (tooth)         (his tooth)     (my tooth)       (her tooth)

   G               [zero]         NG /N/          NO CHANGE
  gardd          ei ardd e       fy ngardd i     ei gardd hi
 (garden)        (his garden)    (my garden)     (her garden)

  LL /K/            L            NO CHANGE        NO CHANGE
  llyfr          ei lyfr e       fy llyfr i       ei llyfr hi
 (book)          (his book)      (my book)        (her book)

   M               F             NO CHANGE        NO CHANGE
  mam            ei fam e        fy mam i         ei mam hi
 (mother)        (his mother)    (my mother)     (her mother)

  RH /r_h/        R [trilled]    NO CHANGE        NO CHANGE
  rhaff          ei raff e       fy rhaff i       ei rhaff hi
  (rope)          (his rope)     (my rope)        (her rope)

The soft mutation occurs:
(a) feminine singular nouns after the definite article, and adjectives
after femine singular nouns - except that {ll} & {rh} do not mutate in
these circumstances.
(b) If an adjective preceeds a noun, the noun is muated whatever its gender
or number (no exceptions)
(c) after _dy_ "thy, your [familiar]", and _ei_ (_'i_ if preceeded by a
vowel, except -i, when _'w_ is used) "his"
(d) after certain prepositions.
(e) after the words _dau_ (masc.) or _dwy_ (fem.) = "two".
(f) after the predicative _yn_ (not the preposition), e.e.
    mae e'n ddyn tal
    is he YN man tall = he is a tall man
(g) the directed of of an _inflected_ part of the verb (Welsh, like all the
modern Celtic langs makes great use of auxiliary verbs + the uninflected
'verbnoun' [roughly: infinitive]).
(h) after the conjunction _neu_ "or" and the words _dyma_ "here is", _dyna_
"there is" and _dacw_ "there is [over yonder]".
(i) Nouns in the vocative form, e.g.
     Bore da, blant!  "Good morning, children. (Plant = children)
[Not an 100% exhaustive list  :)  ]

The nasal mutation
(a) after _fy_ "my"
(b) after the preposition _yn_ "in"
(c) also the word _blynedd_ "years" and _blwydd_ /blujD/ "years" [when
giving one's age] have nasal mutation after: pum (five), saith (seven),
wyth /ujT/ (eight), naw (nine), deg /de:g/ (ten) which then itself becomes
_deng_ /de:N/.
Rule (c) also applied at one time to _diwrnod_ ("day", in the sense of
French "journée", not "jour" which is _dydd_ in Welsh); but this now rather
archaic.

The spirant mutation
(a) after _ei_ [_'i_, _'w_] "her"
(b) after the prepositions _â_, _gyda_ and _tua_ - tho many spoken dialects
no longer keep that rule.
(c) After the conjunction _a_ "and" - but manu spoken dialects ignore this
except in set phrases like _papur a phensil_ (paper & pensil).
(d) the negative forms of inflected verbs (preceed in literary Welsh bu
_ni_, which is normally omitted in spoken Welsh)
(e) after _â_ "as" in the equative and _na_ "than" in the comparative - but
many spoken dialects ignore this.
(d) After the negative relative pronoun _na_  - spoken dialect do always
keep the mutation here, but may drop the _na_  :)
(e) After the words _tri_ (masc) [ but not _tair_ (fem)] "three" & _chwe_
(six) - but many dialects ignore this except in the phrases:
  tri cheiniog = three pence
  chwe cheiniog = six pence
  tri chant = 300
  chwe chant = 600
[There are also one or two other uses in literary Welsh]

I could give the full list for Breton, but time is pressing and I'm tired
at the end of the week.  But if you wish, I'll mail them next week.

Pob hwyl,
Ray.



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