Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

On Sat, 26 May 2001 kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:

>On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 11:53:21PM -0400, Padraic Brown wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Dan Jones wrote:
>>
>> >andrew yscrifef:
>> >
>> >> > hog, porch < porcus
>> >>
>> >> Yes.
>> >
>> >*Please* can we have ill porch -> llo phyrch? Just a few irregular nouns
>> >would make Brithenig more interesting.
>>
>> This is certainly an old argument. I'd certainly like to see irregular
>> forms all over the place; but the regularity of the nouns at least was
>> established some years ago. A few irregular verbs have appeared since
>> I started with Brithenig, though. Perhaps some irregular nounds will
>> yet be coaxed out.
>>
>Oh dear, I've thrown a bigger spanner into the works than I'd intended. The
>vowel changing plurals have to be based on the nominative plural of masc.
>o-stems, i.e. /-i:/ whether you're working from British or Latin.
Brithenig took its nouns from the accusative, so that counts this out.

>In other
>words, you have to assume that the nominative plural survived as in Italian,
>not the accusitive pl. /-o:s/ as in Spanish, French etc. You'd have to
>assume that your Latin base was different from the vulgar latin of Gaul.
>Kennith Jackson has of course suggested in LHEB that the Latin that went
>into Proto-Welsh etc. wasn't the dog-latin of the urban hoi polloi, but a
>sort of rather correct school Latin used by the rural gentry. This may not
>stand up to scrutiny "here", but could have happened "there", especially
>since Londinium was still overrun by the Saxon hords.
It's what Kerno relies on! I've read that Cornwall *here* was only
lightly touched - barely caressed - by the Romans, leaving them
largely unromanised. Of course, I can't ba having with that *there*.
May also explain why good Kerno is SOV rather than SVO like Brithenig
or VSO like street Kerno.

>Certainly it's the
>nominative rather than the accusative that has survived in Welsh, Cornish
>and Breton. In Old Irish there was still a nom/acc distinction, when the
>two cases merged it was generally the accusitive that was lost.
>
>If you lose the /-i:/ ending then all you have left to mark plurals is
>the debris of the various consonant stems -on- -jon- -ow- -nt- -ik- etc.
>most of which get recycled in WCB. as plural endings. Otherwise you have
>to depend on a "compulsory" article etc. as in modern French to mark
>plurality.
This seems to be the way of it. While you can certainly see some
plurals such as you cite (ill of -> llo on); the majority rely on
the article (and any mutation) to distinguish plurals (lla ferch
-> llo ferch). I'd like to see some exploration into such irregular
plurals, though, as I think they can become a viable if small group
in Brithenig.

>I'm afraid the vowel change plurals are so much a feature of WCB (and
>AFAIK Sindarin) than I just expect to find them in any language styled
>on Welsh etc.
Remember that Brithenig _isn't_ styled after Welsh. Welsh doesn't
exist *there* at all. The sound changes that happened *here* in
Welsh are assumed to be operant *there* on Brithenig. [At least,
as far as I understand "styled after"!]

>From the following they would seem to occur in Kerno
>and Arvorec, hmmm some very convoluted diaglossae must be involved :-)
And tri- and the occasional tetragloss. As I mentioned, especially
with food/animal words. Some words found in government, religion and
the trades end up similarly. Il druids = Catholic priest, pagan
priest; il prezedreores = minsiter, rabbi, Romish priest, etc.

Padraic.

>Keith