CHAPTER IX
- i
THE AUXILIARY VERBS i. Bos, to be. The verb to be in Cornish, as in other Aryan lan- guages, is made up of more than one verb. In Cornish it may be divided in two parts. The first of these consists of two tenses, a present and an imperfect, the second of the usual five tenses, the imperative and the infinitive. The first division, by means of reduplications and additions, takes a variety of forms in the early literature, and there is a considerable uncertainty about the exact force of these forms. Some of them evidently mean little more than elongations and contractions for the sake of metre. The second division is formed with greater regularity on a root b, changing under certain conditions to v (often written/) and/. I. FIRST DIVISION. PRESENT TENSE, / am. Sing. i. ov (old form of), dthov, thov, oma, athoma, thoma. 2. os, athos, thos, osta, dthosta, thosta. 3. yu, dthyu, thyu, yua, dthyua, thyua. Plur. i. on, dthon, than. 2. ough, at hough, though. 3. ens, at hens, thens. There is little or no difference of meaning in these forms. The lengthened form athov, or its apocopated thov, is generally found at the beginning of an assertion.
