Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, andrew <hobbit@...> wrote :

> Aah, I understand this now and I find it enlightening.  I shall have to
> consider how it could be applied to Brithenig.  It might prove to be
> dissimilar to Welsh as Brithenig preserves the oblique in preference to
> the nominative.  I will have to go back and study Old Brithenig
> paradigms I think.
Well, whereas with the masc. o-stems it was the nom. pl. that was the odd
man out in having vowel affection, in the case of the consonant (and u and
i) stems it's the nom. sing. that's special in lacking an extra syllable.
So it's only going to work if the Brithenig sing. comes from the old nom.
sing., the oblique sing. will usually come out the same as both nom. and
oblique plural. See Ray's post e.g. treatment of homo - homines in various
Romance langs.

>> katus - katowes (battle)  ---  cad - cadau (the commonest pl. ending)
> ill cad - llo chad (*chadew?)
> This would assume OB cadum - caduos
In the same way that British seems to have substituted its case endings for
the Latin ones in nouns it borrowed (the system of declensions ran
parallel to that of Latin), so I'd expect Proto-Brithenig to have
substituted the corresponding Latin inflexions when it borrowed British
words. There should be some general pointers in the way Latin dealt with
loans from Greek.

So (Latin grammar in hand) that would put katus in the 4th Dec. (?)
OB /katus, katum - katu:s/
Which would give your original ill cad - llo chad
Of course it's possible that the word switched declensions when it was
borrowed, or picked up a plural ending (if you decide to allow them) at
a later stage.

>> latru: - latrones (thief) ---  lleidr (< lladr) - lladron
> ill lladrun - llo lladrun
>> (from Latin, the inflexions modified to conform with British)
> Brithenig, unfortunately, conforms in contrast to British.
Well it would, it's Latin to start with (stop apologising :) )
The L. forms seem to be (looks in grammar again) :
latro:, latro:nem - latro:nes : If Proto-Br. had a British sound system
there would have been no /o:/ and either /ow/ or /u:/ would have been
substituted, either way they end up as /y/ in Middle Brithenig, so
lladr - lladrun (if you keep the nom. sing.) or
lladrun - lladrum (if you keep the oblique sing.)
I'm assuming your <u> means the same thing as Welsh <u> that is
/y/ later unrounded to a centralised /I/

>> trebes - trebiyes (settlement) --- tref - trefi or trefydd
> hmmm, ill tref - llo threfi(dd) could prove productive in Brithenig.
This is of course cognate with Latin "tribus" however the British word
is an i-stem, now how do they go in Latin (rustle of pages)
trebis, trebem - trebe:s and as British had no /e:/ that would give
trebis, trebem - trebejs or trebi:s which would go on to give
tref (tryf ?) - tref or tryf which could have settled down maybe to
lla dref - llo dryf

Hmmm, looks like the L. i- and u-stems contracted so there's no extra
syllable anywhere in (nom. acc.)(sing. pl.). If you wanted to get
plurals like those in Welsh you'd have to diphthongise the L. long /o:/
and /e:/. Maybe under the influence of native /-owes -iyes/ the Latin
endings went not to /-ows -ejs/ but to disyllabic /-owes -ejes/

>>  merkess (<merket-s) - merketes (daughter etc.) --- merch - merched
> lla ferch - llo ferched.  The meaning here has changed to 'girl',
Likewise in W&C
If modelled on the pattern of L. seges -segete:s
merkes, merketem - merketejs giving
merch, merched - merched
So again the contrast only works if you use the nom. sing.

>> bra:ter - bra:teres (brother) --- brawd - broder (now usually brodyr)
>  Brithenig has ill ffradr.  I don't know if this could vary between ill
> ffrad - llo fradr.  It seems a bit forced to me.
Welsh is exceptional in keeping the regular reflex of bra:ter without
the -er syllable. Cornish for example has broder - breder as if from
bra:tros - bratri (cf. modern Greek pateros for pater - is that right?)
The pl. must be analogical as /a:/ doesn't suffer i-affection.
(Just looked up the Breton: sing. breur - pl. breuder (!) (<eu> < /a:/))

Well, food for thought :-)

Keith

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