crazy Celtic collective nouns

On Wed, May 23, 2001 at 12:27:36AM -0400, R. Eamon Graham wrote:
> First thing: I tried finding the Brithenig page, but got a 404
> error.  I think I have an old URL.  Please tell me yes!
YES
>
> Okay the third thing concerns collective nouns, namely, the Celtic
> trait of forming the singular of a collective noun from the plural
> (which often times looks like a singular rather than a plural)
> rather than the other way around...  I read something about this
> when I was like 12 and I was as confused about it then as I am now,
> and something said about a Brithenig word reminded me of it:
>
> Keith wrote:
>
> > With the plural "pyrch" maybe? Or then again you could copy W. and make
> > porch the plural "swine" and use a derivative like porchen to mean a
> > single piggy.
>
> And an example in Welsh I can think of is "stars" sêr (se^r) with
> singular seren; and isn't "bird" done the same way?
>
> Anyway, can someone with a more systematic linguistic knowledge than
> myself tell me about this phenomenon (and perhaps its history) and
> then - next part of my question - does Brithenig in fact do this
> like Welsh?  Does it do it to Latin nouns or only nouns of Welsh
> origin?  How do our other Celticonlangs handle this?
It's found in Welsh, Cornish and Breton, but not in Irish so I imagine
the system arose in late British. It's not really difficult. You start
with a word that has collective or plural meaning eg. plant - children or
gwydd - trees/woodland and add an ending (-yn masculine, -en feminine)
to get "a single one of" whatever it is : Plentyn - child, gwydden - tree.
In Breton at least you can have even more fun by then adding a plural
ending to get "several individuals of ..." e.g. geot - grass; geotenn -
a blade of grass; geotennou - blades of grass.

Also in Welsh (and Cornish) llygoden = mouse, from llygod - mice, but
this is clearly itself a plural in -od from an obsolete *lly^g !

>
> Is this phenomenon found in other languages?
I think Arabic does something similar.


> Eamon
>
Keith

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