Cornish grammar

Cornish nouns, like those of other Celtic languages, possess two grammatical genders, meaning that they belong to one of two groups: masculine or feminine. Sometimes the gender of a noun can be inferred from the class of words it belongs to, for example, nouns referring to males, such as gour “man, husband” or tarow “bull”, or verbal nouns, such as kerdhes “walking” and bos “being”, are masculine whereas nouns referring to females, such as hwor “sister” and yar “hen”, are feminine. Nevertheless, it is often impossible to determine the gender of a noun from its form, although certain nominal suffixes have gender:

• Masculine suffixes: -adow, -der/-ter, -di/-ji/-ti, -ik, -la, -(n)eth (mostly), -our, -(y)ans, -yas, -ydh, -(y)er, -yn, -(y)or
• Feminine suffixes: -a, -ek, -el, -en, -es, -(on)ieth

There is a very small number of nouns which may be either gender, such as nev “heaven” and tonn “grassland”, and is similar to its sister language Breton in that the noun tra “thing” takes masculine numerals above one and masculine referring pronouns but has the mutations of a feminine noun after an “the”, unn “one” and on accompanying adjectives.[2]

Most nouns have a singular and plural form, the latter deriving from the former in a number of ways. Plural forms may add an ending to a singular, such as treth “beach” to trethow, pompyon “pumpkin” to pompyons and lader “thief” to ladron. Adding an ending may be accompanied by a vowel change, as in the case of gwreg “wife” to gwragedh and hwor “sister” to hwerydh, or may involve a vowel change alone, for example korn “horn” to kern and men “stone” to meyn.[1][2]

A small number of nouns display relics of a dual system. These are formed by prefixing masculine dew or feminine diw, both “two”, to the respective noun. Dual nouns are often parts of the body and indicate the pair of them taken together, for instance, lagas “eye” to dewlagas “(pair of) eyes” and bregh “arm” to diwvregh “(pair of) arm”. These carry a different meaning to the regular plural forms, such as lagasow or lagajow “eyes” and breghow “arms”, which do not indicate a matching pair.[1][2][3]

A distinctive and unusual feature of Brythonic languages is that of collective and singulative number. The base form of some Cornish nouns denotes a class or group, often natural objects, such as sab “pine trees”, kelyon “flies” and niwl “fog”. A singulative is formed by adding the feminine ending -en to denote a single individual of the group, hence saben “a pine tree”, kelyonen “a fly” and niwlen “a patch of fog”. Singulatives can themselves have plural forms in -ow, denoting a number of individuals of the group, so for instance, kelyonen gives kelyonennow “(a number of) flies (individually)”.[1][2]

Cornish lacks an indefinite article (although unn “one” is sometimes used to mean ”a certain...” e.g. unn ki “a certain dog”), but has a definite article, an, which precedes the noun, for example an Kernow “the Cornishman” and an Kernowesow “the Cornishwomen”. The article causes a soft mutation on feminine singular nouns, such as Kernowes “Cornishwoman” to an Gernowes “the Cornishwoman”, and on masculine plural nouns denoting persons, as Kernowyon “Cornishmen” to an Gernowyon “the Cornishmen”, although exceptions to the latter include an tasow “the fathers” and clear English borrowings such as an doktours “the doctors”. Also the masculine plural nouns meyn ”stones” and mergh ”horses” are exceptions, which are lenited to an veyn ”the stones” and an vergh ”the horses”, respectively.[4][5] An is shortened to 'n after certain function words that end in a vowel, meaning a “of”, dhe “to” and ha “and” become a'n “of the”, dhe'n “to the” and ha'n “and the”, and in addition, yn “in” becomes identically pronounced y'n “in the”.[1][2]

The definite article and a noun followed by the clitics ma and na to produce the demonstratives “this/these” and “that/those” respectively, for example an lyver ma “this book” and an lyvrow na “those books”.[2]

The possessive determiners are as follows. Notice their similarity to the more reduced forms of the personal pronouns.[2]

Personal pronouns in Cornish can be arranged as follows.[2]

Independent personal pronouns are used as the subject of a nominal sentence, for example My a grys “I believe”, or can stand before the verb in a verbal sentence to draw attention to the subject implied by the verb, for example Ni ny yllyn mos “We cannot go”. Certain other constructions employ independent pronouns, such as those based on verbal nouns, like ev dhe dhos omma “(that) he came here”, and those that follow conjunctions, such as hag i ow kortos “as they are/were waiting”.

Suffixed pronouns are attached to nouns in possessive constructions, to inflected verbs and to pronouns and are used to reinforce a pronoun previously expressed by a verbal or personal ending, for example Ple eth hi? “Where did she go?”.

Reduced pronouns are used between a verbal particle and a verb, such as in mar ny’th welav “if I don't see you”.

Demonstrative pronouns display two degrees of proximity as well as gender and number.

These pronouns lose their final a before yw “is” and o “was”, for example Homm yw ow keniterow “This is my (female) cousin”.

Adjectives are inflected with -a to give a comparative/superlative form. This suffix causes provection of the adjective stem, for example glyb “wet” to glyppa and krev “stong” to kreffa. A number of adjectives are irregular and have separate comparative and superlative forms.[2]

^1 Used in place names.

Cornish verbs are highly regular and are conjugated to show distinctions of person, number, mood, tense and aspect in various combinations. An example conjugation of prena “buy” is given in the following tables.[7]

Certain points should be observed about the above:[2][7]

^1 The final consonant of a verb stem is modified before subjunctive endings. Consonants are usually lengthened, shortening the previous vowel, and voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced and lengthened, for example, igeri “open” to igerriv, kregi “hang” to krekkiv and hwedhla “tell tales” to hwetthliv.

^2 Certain verbs take slightly different endings in the indicative imperfect. Instead of -en, -es and -a, they take -yn, -ys and -i respectively, for example, hwerthin “laugh” to hwerthyn “I/we were laughing”, hwerthys “you [singular] were laughing”, hwerthi “he/she/it was laughing”.

^3 The third person singular indicative present/future and the second person imperative utilise the verbal stem with no ending.

^4 In the third person singular and impersonal preterite, some verbs take the alternative ending -is, for example tevi “grow” to tevis and gelwel “call” to gelwis.

^5 The impersonal form is equivalent to the use of the English pronoun one and can be used in a similar way to the English passive, for example, Prenas an boos “One bought the food; The food was bought”.

^6 The infinitive form is considered to be a verbal noun in Cornish grammars, meaning an example like prena can function as both verbal “to buy” and nominal “(the act of) buying”. A number of different verbal noun endings exist.

It should also be noted that vowel affection occurs in the stem of some verbs before certain endings, especially those with close front vowels, though not exclusively. The following table highlights how affection works with tava “touch”.[7]

Note:[2]

^1 The alternative indicative imperfect endings -yn, -ys and -i cause vowel affection.

^2 Amongst the endingless forms, the present/future third person singular and the second person singular imperative, the former may include vowel affection while the latter does not, for example, seni “sound” to sen “he/she/it sounds” and son “sound!” and gelwel “call” to gelow “he/she/it calls” and galw “call!”.

^3 The alternative third person singular and impersonal preterite ending -is causes vowel affection.

^4 These endings also cause affection with some verbs.

^5 Certain verbal noun endings cause vowel affection, again especially those with close front vowels.

A handful of irregular verbs exist, the most common of which are detailed here.

The most irregular verb of all is bos “be”, which is often used as an auxiliary and can be conjugated to show a number of additional distinctions not present in other verbs.

Some peculiarities of bos to be noted as follows:[2]

^1 The present tense has separate short and long forms. The short forms are used when a subject complement is a noun or adjective whereas the long forms are used with adverbial and participle complements.[3] In addition, the imperfect has a habitual form.

^2 Yma and ymons are used in affirmitive declarative independent clauses whereas usi, eus and esons are used elsewhere, such as negative, interrogative and dependent clauses. Usi is used with definite subjects whereas eus is used with indefinite subjects.

^3 The form *bedhys is not found independently but rather in its mutated form vedhys as part of compound words, such as godhvedhys “known” and piwvedhys “owned”.

Y'm beus is a combination of an reduced pronoun with dative meaning and the third person singular forms of bos, meaning literally “there is to [me]”, or more idiomatically “[I] have”.[2] A similar construction is present in Breton. The presence of the pronoun means there are separate masculine and feminine third person singular forms but no impersonal forms, verbal noun or participles.

The irregular verb godhvos (or goffos[1]) “know, can (know how to)” is based upon bos although does not utilise a habitual imperfect.[2][3][7]

Another extremely common irregular verb also used as an auxiliary is gul “do, make”.[7]

The verb mos “go, become” is irregular and has separate forms for the present perfect.[7]

Similarly, dos “come, arrive” is irregular and has present perfect forms.[7]

The irregular verbs ri “give” and dri “bring” (alternatively, rei and drei[1]) have similar conjugations. This table give the forms of ri from which the dri forms can be composed by adding an initial d, for example rov “I give” to drov “I bring”. The only exceptions to this are that the second person singular imperatives of dri are dro, doro and doroy and that, as usual, the ow of the present participle cause provection of the d to t to give ow tri.[2][7]

Similar to other Celtic languages, Cornish has an underlying vigesimal counting system. “Two”, “three” and “four” and derivative numbers have separate masculine (m.) and feminine (f.) forms.[2]

The numbers 21 to 39 employ the connective warn “on the” to join the smaller number to the larger, for example onan warn ugens “21”, naw warn ugens “29” and unnek warn ugens “31”. From 41 onwards, the connecting word is ha “and”, as in onan ha dew-ugens “41”, pymthek ha dew-ugens “55” and nownsek ha peswar-ugens “99”.

Cardinal numbers used to form larger numbers include:

Beyond 100, it is still possible to use multiples of ugens, such as hwegh-ugens “120”. Kans “100”, mil “1,000” and milvil “1,000,000” are all masculine numbers, for example tri mil “3,000”.

Ordinal numbers and their abbreviations are shown below. The majority of numbers employ the ordinal suffix -ves.[2]

Larger numbers also employ the suffix -ves.

In multi-word numbers, the initial smaller number joined with the connector takes the ordinal form, for example kynsa warn ugens “21st” and nownsegves ha peswar-ugens “99th” (not *onan warn ugensves or *nownsek ha peswar-ugensves). In multiword numbers that are not joined by connecting words, the final number takes the ordinal form, for example dew-ugensves “40th”, hwegh-ugenves “120th”, tri milves “3,000th”.

Besides the “neutral” structures given above, elements of Cornish sentences can be fronted to give emphasis, or when responding to a question with requested information. Fronting involves moving the element to the beginning of the sentence. English typically achieves this by modifying tone or intonation.

There are two particles involved in fronting. The particle a is actually a relative particle used when the subject or direct object of a sentence is fronted. If anything else is fronted, usually adverbials or information headed by prepositions, the particle used is y (yth before a vowel).