38 (ann is the demonst. in annaor above). Brit. no doubt had several demonstratives used before nouns; but the adoption of one to be used as an art. seems to be later than the separation of W., Corn, and Bret., and independent in each. The origin of the W. yr is not clear. Brit. had an l-demonstrative seen in Ml. W. y lleill beside y neill § 165 vi, cf. yll § 160 i (2); and ‑l is more likely than ‑n to have become ‑r. But yr may come from a demonst. with locative ‑r- suffix, as in E. here, there, which might be declined with stem ‑ro‑, cf. Lat. suprā; yr < *is-ros? cf. Lat. ille < [W 1]is-le.
v. The initial consonant of a fem. sg. noun (except ll- and rh-) undergoes the soft mutation after the art.
Note initial gw͡y‑: yr ŵyl ‘the holiday’, yr ŵydd ‘the goose’; initial gw̯y‑: y w̯yrth ‘the miracle’, y w̯ŷs ‘the summons’.
The mutation shows that the art. had the o/ā-declension in Brit.
Nouns
§ 115. i. The old Keltic declension is lost in W., §§ 4, § 113; a noun has one form for all cases. This is usually derived from the old nominative, as ciwed ‘rabble’ < Lat. cīvitas; sometimes from the accusative, as ciwdod ‘people’ < cīvitātem. (In W., ciwed and ciwdod are different words, not different cases of the same word.) Traces of the oblique cases survive in adverbial and prepositional expressions, §§ 215, 220.
ii. The noun in W. has two numbers, the singular and the plural. Traces of the use of the dual are seen in deurudd ‘cheeks’, dwyfron ‘breasts’, dwylaw ‘hands’; the last has become the ordinary pl. of llaw ‘hand’.
The dual of o-stems may have given the same form as the sg., as in Ir., where we have fer ‘man’ < *u̯iros, and fer ‘(two) men’, apparently from *u̯irŏ, as *u̯irō would have given *fiur (cf. Gk. δύο, Vedic voc. ‑a; but W. dau implies ‑ō in *dúu̯ō itself). Thus W. dau darw ‘two bulls’ (deudarw̯ p. 52), déu-wr L.G.C. 185 ‘two men’ (‑wr keeps its sg. form while the pl. became gwŷr § 66 iii (1)). But in nouns with consonant stems the dual must have taken the same form as the pl.; thus Ar. *uqsō > W. ych ‘ox’, but the dual *uqsene and the pl. *uqsenes both gave ychen; so we have Ml. W. deu ychen r.m. 121 ‘two oxen’, deu vroder do. 26 ‘two brothers’; and, by analogy, dwy wrageẟ a.l. ii 98 ‘two women’. In Late Mn. W. the sg. form only is used.
- ↑ On p. xxvii the author adds “*” here.
