Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

At 5:18 pm +0000 26/5/01, kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:
>On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 11:53:21PM -0400, Padraic Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>
>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.
Agreed.

>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.
Hang on - the nominative _did_ survive in Old French, cf.
           SINGULAR     PLURAL
Nominative:  murs        mur
   Oblique:  mur         murs

>You'd have to
>assume that your Latin base was different from the vulgar latin of Gaul.
Why?  It's clear from Old French that not only did the -i nominative plural
of the 2nd. decl. survive in Gaul, it actually got extended to some 3rd
dec. nouns.  It seems that on the analogy of words like _magister_ with its
plural _magistri_, 3rd decl. in -er like _pater_ developed a nom. plural
*patri.  In Old French it is declined:
           SINGULAR     PLURAL
Nominative:  pedre       pedre
   Oblique:  pedre       pedres

(The -d- being pronounce [D] in the above forms)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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