Re: Middle Welsh (was Cein)

En réponse à kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET:

>
> > Anyway. The A is marked with the preposition _o_ which has
> > the meaning 'from, of'. Example:
>
> > kymryt o    Arthur y   daryan eureit
> > take   from Arthur the shield golden
> > 'Arthur took the golden shield.'
>
> "kymryt" is a verbal noun lit. "taking". If you wanted to say "A. took
> it"
> it would be "ygymryt o Arthur" lit. "its taking by A."
>
> The "o" construction seems to be a middle Welsh speciality. What seems
> to
> have happened is first, probably for variety or to emphasise the
> action,
> the verb "to do" was used as a auxillary in narrative passages. So
> instead
> of "he went" you got "he did go" but in Welsh this is expressed as
> "going he did" "mynet a oruc" where <mynet> [m@ned] (Mod. W. mynd) is
> a
> verbal noun. (This construction isn't much used in Modern W. but is
> very
> common in Cornish and Breton, also it's equivalent in Manx). When a
> series
> of actions needed to be described only the first (if that!) was given
> the
> auxillary or a finite verb, the rest were expressed by a series of
> verbal nouns. So "he arose, and went out and looked and saw ... "
> would
> be "arising he did, and going out, and looking and seeing ..." This
> gives
> a very fluid narrative effect when for example one event leads to
> another.
> Objects to verbal nouns are expressed by possessive pronouns so "saw
> it"
> becomes "its seeing", "saw the dog" "the dog's seeing" in Welsh
> "y welet", "gwelet y ki". Usually the subject is established at the
> beginning
> of the sequence, but if it needs to be expressed later the
> o-construction
> can be used with a verbal noun. The nearest translation would be "by" as
> in
> "its taking by Arthur". Normally "o" is the preposition "from".
>
> A couple of examples where o is used to mark a change of actor :
>
[snip examples]

>
> Middle Welsh narratives often alternate between such "action
> sequences"
> and passages of dialogue, the effect is not unlike a movie script.
>
Interestingly, my conlang Moten is not unlike Middle Welsh in that respect. In
Moten, conjugation exists only periphrasticly, verbs existing only as non-finite
forms (nominal IIRC) which must be declined and used with the auxiliaries atom
(to be) or agem (to have) which are the only verbs to have finite forms. I kind
of took the idea from Basque. The sentence order in Moten is SOV, and strongly
head-last (except for adjectives which often follow the noun they complete).
Now, when a sequence of actions uses the same finite auxiliary in the same form,
only the last action gets the auxiliary, and the previous clauses get only the
declined form of the non-finite form, like your examples, but the other way
round :) (you can see that very well in the Moten version of the first
translation relay, the Starling's Song. Go the the site of Irina Rempt for it :)
). I had thought that this was completely original, as I didn't borrow the idea
from any language (I just took the idea of leaving out what's not necessary from
Japanese, and broadened its effect), and now I discover that Middle Welsh (a
language I know nothing about) had a similar feature. Well, that's one of the
joys of conlanging in my opinion. You think you make out a feature out of the
blue, and you discover that there is a natlang which already used it. Marvelous
feeling... :)

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Reply