CHAT Welsh periphrasis (was Re: Ergative)

At 4:35 pm -0400 21/10/98, Sally Caves wrote:
>On Wed, 21 Oct 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
......
>> South Walian:  fe aethon nhw
>>                   WENT   THEY  [initial 'fe' is a "positive" marker]
>>
>> North Walian: ddaru    iddyn nhw  fynd
>>               HAPPENED TO    THEM A-GOING
>>
>> (Preposition 'i' conjugates and, of course, 'mynd' mutates after the
>> 'dative subject'   :)
>>
>> It also means BTW colloquial north Walian can express all 'tenses' which
>> are concerned with time only by means of auxiliary verbs.
>
>Well, they certainly can do that in the south, too, Ray...I was taught
>Swansea Welsh, and you do make heavy use of periphrastic constructions
>like Wy wedy mynd, "I am after going" instead of using the conjugated
>verb.
Yes, literary Welsh has 'yr wyf wedi myned' which in "standard colloquial"
is 'rydw i wedi mynd' = I am after going.  But this is taught as the
equivalent of the English present perfect 'I have gone' as opposed to the
simple past 'I went' which is supposed to be the conjugated tense - and is
'Fe es i' in parts of the south.

BUT - I was under the impression that modern colloquial forms were
following, so to speak, the Latin & Romance models and using 'rydw i
wedi...' (i.e. Swansea 'wy wedi...') as _both_ present perfect & the simple
past.   It's nice to have confirmation of this, at least from the Swansea
area.

I believe the Gogs still distinguish between 'rwy wedi...' (present
perfect) and 'ddaru i mi....' (simple past) [Note in the north it's 'i mi',
not the southern 'i fi'   :) ]

But the original observation was not so much the undoubted insular Celtic
preference for auxiliary verbs & periphrastic tense formation, but an
instance where the 'logical subject' is expressed by a dative
construnction.  Now there's a challenge for the Hwntas  :)

Ray.