Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/139

120 GRAMMAR manner, is changed to its fourth state. If a present participle governs a pronoun object, the latter in its possessive form immediately precedes (and governs as to initial) the infinitive, and is itself preceded by the prepo- sition worth. In late Cornish ow was often written a or o. Another participial form, common in Breton and occasionally found in Cornish, has been already men- tioned in Chap. III. 2. This is made by placing the preposition yn, en, in, and the indefinite article idn, un, before the infinitive or verbal noun. Its use is chiefly adverbial. Thus, in the Poem of the Passion we find, yn un scolchye, skulking ; yn un garme, crying out ; yn un fystyne, hurrying. The Infinitive or Verbal Noun is formed by add- ing a, ya, y, as or es, al or el, to the root. In some verbs the root itself, without any addition, is the verbal noun. The Past or Passive Participle is formed by adding es to the root, with or without modification of the root vowel. The Passive termination is er for the present and es for the preterite, but in Modern Cornish the Passive is almost always formed after the English model by the auxiliary verb bos, to be, with the past participle. The terminations ma and ta are often added to the first and second persons singular of various tenses in interrogative and subjunctive sentences, and in the case of the first person even in ordinary narration. Norris maintains that these are not forms of mi and ti, but only an a suffixed to the verb termination, which in the first person reverts to a primary m for v, and in the second person reassumes a dropped /. This theory is rather supported by our finding a occasionally added to the third persons of tenses of the verb to be, but va is