Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

 On Sun, 27 May 2001, andrew <hobbit@...> wrote:

 >> 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.

 > I find this interesting.  Can you explain how it came about that
 > consonent stems were recycled in this way?

 The nom. sing. ending was at most /-s/ so that no syllable was added,
 whereas the nom. pl. (and most other case endings) added a syllable /-es/.
 Final syllables were generally lost between Late British and Early Welsh/
 Cornish/Breton, so the last bit of the stem disappeared from the nom. sing.
 but was retained in the plural, and was thus reinterpreted by later
 generations as a plural marker. This gave a pool of a dozen or so plural
 endings which spread by analogy to other words based on either form or
 meaning. Some words have alternative plurals, or different plurals now than
 at earlier stages of the language. The choice of plural also often differs
 between W/C/B.

 Some examples :

 British sing. -  plural --- Welsh sing. - plural

 katus - katowes (battle)  ---  cad - cadau (the commonest pl. ending)
 latru: - latrones (thief) ---  lleidr (< lladr) - lladron
    (from Latin, the inflexions modified to conform with British)
 trebes - trebiyes (settlement) --- tref - trefi or trefydd
 merkess (<merket-s) - merketes (daughter etc.) --- merch - merched
 bra:ter - bra:teres (brother) --- brawd - broder (now usually brodyr)

 > andrew.

 Keith

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