Re: Cein

Keith wrote:

> /i/ might be expected to cause lenition (soft mutation). /ir/ might
> just possibly cause germination leading to a spirant mutation and
> maybe doubling of /l r m n/. The original /r/ of ir would be lost
> except perhaps before vowels.
I might have already replied to this, but I got a new idea
from reading about the plural and spirant mutation in
Brithenig.

The idea is that the plural def.art. _ir_ for some reason
underwent rhotacism, turning it into _is_. Then following
the regular sound changes final /s/ became /h/ and finally
disappeared leaving only spirant mutation on the following
phoneme. The spirant mutation after the pl.def.art. was then
associated with the plural itself and spread by analogy to
indefinite nouns in the plural as well. So this leads to
nothing new, except that a) I have a credible explanation
and b) the obvious consequence that plural nouns beginning
with a vowel get a [h] attached to them.

So the pl.def.art. is now only _i_, just like the sg.def.art.
So nouns beginning with a phoneme that don't undergo
spirant mutation looks the same in both plural and singular,
which isn't really a problem. And for every phoneme except
/p t k/ the spirant and the soft mutation are the same, but
that's hardly a problem either, despite all the clashes.

Examples:

SG:     PL:     DEF.SG:   DEF.PL:     ENGLISH:
ammar   hammar  i ammar   i hammar   'inhabited world' [vowel]
coll    choll   i goll    i choll    'cloak'        [no clash]
llir    lir     i lir     i lir      'song'  [soft/spir clash]
ffein   ffein   i ffein   i ffein    'white cloud'   [no mut.]

||| daniel

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