Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/125

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io6 GRAMMAR The last sentence is a good example of possible pronunciations. If it is an independent statement, the phrase emphasis being on hurling and sport, it would be accented h/rlya yugan gudryny. If, however, we wish to say that hurling is our sport but football is yours (herlya yu 'gan gwary ny, mes pella-dros yu 'gas gwary whf), the second phrase-emphasis would be on ny and why, and they would be sounded as the English words nigh and why. Sometimes the personal pronoun as a genitive follow- ing the noun, with or without the preposition a, of, was used instead of a possessive pronoun, but in this case it was probably not enclitic. Thus in a letter in verse by John Boson, in the Gwavas MS., dated 1710, we find:- Ma goz screfa compaz, den fir o (for a) vi, your writing is correct, my wise man, or, wise man of me. And in a song by John Tonkin of St. Just in the same MS., the probable date of which is about 1700, we find : An Prounter ni ez en Plew East, our parson who is in the parish of St. Just. Or perhaps more correctly in a copy of one verse of this song in the Borlase MS. : Prounter net (ez) en pleu Est, for the article an before a noun followed by an apposi- tional genitive seems incorrect, though one finds in the earliest known version of the Lord's Prayer, given in John Davies's Welsh translation of Robert Parsons' Booke of Christian Exercise (1632), An Tas ni, though this may be a mistake for agan. In the song quoted above one finds also :