Re: Plural vowel change

At 8:01 pm +0100 28/1/99, Daniel Andreasson wrote:
[WELSH 'car' ~ 'ceir']
>
>Why is the plural 'ceir' then? Shouldn't it be 'cair'? Or perhaps
>the spelling has nothing to do with it, (since it's pronounced /c@ir/).
The spelling has. *cair would be [kair].  So why 'ceir' [k@ir]?  The simple
answer is I don't know.  I'd need to be more clued up on sound changes of
middle Welsh, I'm afraid.

=2E......
>> If your original plural was -u, then this might have given
>> rise to diphthongs in -u rather than unrounded back vowels
>> (or you might have both!), e.g.  kan, kaun; mer, meur
>> /mewr/ _or_ meor etc.
>
>
>Like: /karu/ -> /karw/ -> /kawrw/ -> /kawr/? That's pretty cool! In fact,
>it's a great idea! Mmm... /kawr/... that tastes nice! :)
Yep!

>So as you suggest, I might combine this with a sort of vowel harmony and
>still get the historical part right, right? If root words have a back
>vowel, the plural suffix is -u. And if it's a front vowel, the plural
>suffix would be -i.
>Examples:
>          kar - karu  -->  kar - kawr
>          ker - keri  -->  ker - keir
>          kir - kiri  -->  kir - kiir (long vowel)
Yeah - natlangs often have several ways of forming plurals.


>> Well, I hope I've given you a few clues  :)
>
>
>Well...some... :D
>
>Just one more question to see if I got the umlauts right.
>A-umlaut lowers (i -> e, u -> o)
>U-umlaut rounds (i -> y, e -> =F8)
>I-umlaut? Was that the car -> ceir example?
Yes, car ~ ceir is such an example; so is 'goose' ~ 'geese'.  And John
Cowan gives the basic Germanic i-umlaut in his reply.  The precise way a
language handles this varies slightly, but the underlying principle is the
same: a fronting of vowels.

Ray.