- Herbert Pilch, ‘The Syntactic Study of Colloquial Welsh’, Studia Celtica, VI (1971), 138–157.
- John Morris-Jones, A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative (Oxford, 1913), pp. 270–282 (hereafter cited as WG); An Elementary Welsh Grammar (Oxford, 1921), pp. 84–90 (hereafter cited as EWG); and Welsh Syntax, An Unfinished Draft (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1931), pp. 78–86 (hereafter cited as WS).
- Cf., in two of the better school grammars in current use: J. J. Evans, Gramadeg Cymraeg (Aberystwyth: Gwasg Aberystwyth, 1946), pp. 94–106 (hereafter cited as GC), and S. J. Williams, Elfennau Gramadeg Cymraeg (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1959), pp. 55–61 (hereafter cited as EGC).
- Edward Anwyl, A Welsh Grammar for Schools, Part I: Accidence, Part 11: Syntax (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898-99).
- Mixed (cymysg) is the technical term used by Welsh grammarians for the contrastive- emphasis sentence (i.e., where a part of the sentence is preposed for emphasis: John a dorroddy ffenestr “It was John who broke the window”). Evans seems to use indirect to apply to similar sentences in noun-clause position: gwelais mai John a dorrodd y ffenestr “I saw that it was John who broke the window”.
- The capitals following the quoted forms indicate their mutating characteristics—N: nasalization; L: lenition; S: spirantization + preaspiration of vowels; A: preaspiration of vowels without spirantization. Where a form is quoted without a following capital, it does not cause any mutation.
- Morris-Jones (and consequently subsequent grammarians) has left â ‘as’ (cyn waned â’ m cath ‘as weak as my cat') out of his list—no doubt inadevertently.
- This applies equally when y has been orthographically deleted after a vowel, as in lle (y) “where’ (lle'i gwelais ‘where I saw him'), Yno (y) ‘there’ (yno'i gwelais ‘There I saw him”).
- Presumably, oni “until’ (oni'ch gwêl'until he sees you'), oni ‘if not’ (oni'th we/odd ‘if he did not see you'), and the interrogative particle oni (oni’ eh gwelodd? ‘Did he not see you?”) should also be included.
- There is at present a determined effort by some writers to use this “colloquial” form in writing Welsh. But tradition dies hard, and in any case (as will be seen in Part 11 below) the question is far from being a simple one of substituting gwelant or gwelant or gwelant hwy.
- As, for instance, in the case of the third person singular, in which “an affixed ef or hi relieves the reader from any uncertainty…,” WS 84 (fe'i gwelais ef ‘I saw him”, fe'I gwelais hi ‘I saw her”), or to distinguish between gwelwn i ‘I would see” and gwelwn ni ‘We shall see”.
- The subject is, of course, transposed to the position immediately following the auxiliary component in an “auxiliary verb” construction.
- The i could be either a first person singular (vi ~ i) or a third person singular feminine (i). Since the first person singular form mi does occur in many dialects as a generalized preverbal particle, whereas the third person singular feminine form hi, as far as is known, does not, it has been taken for granted that the first equation is the right one.
- Of course, i∣n, has singular reference and alternates with rai in the plural: ən rai i də rai di, and so on-ən i∣n i iu un “This is mine”; əm rai i iu reina “Those are mine”.
WORD
Volume 28, 1977 - Issue 1-2: Celtic Linguistics--1976