Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/122

 THE PRONOUNS 103 2. THE POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS. i. First Person Singular. English, my. ow, governing the third state. When the initial of the noun has no third state, ow governs the first state : ow thds, my father ; ow gwlas, my country. After a preposition ending in a vowel, after en, in, changed to e, or after the conjunction ha, and, my is generally represented by ';, which governs the first state : dhd'm fas, to my father ; ha'm tds, and my father. em corf, in my body. Sometimes in these cases the preposition or conjunc- tion is combined with ow. This is especially common in Jordan's play of The Creation. The initial, if possible, is then in the third state : me haw mab, I and my son ; thow thas, to my father. 2. Second Person Singular. English, thy. dha (older form dhe, dhy), governing the second state : dha das, thy father. After a preposition ending in a vowel, after en, or after ha, thy is represented by 'th, generally governing the second state, but sometimes, when the initial fol- lowing it is d, the fourth. dhoth das, to thy father ; ha 'th das, and thy father. e 'th gorf, in thy body ; a 'th trdk (R.D., 1730), from thy evil. Very often these mutations were not written in the Dramas. In later Cornish this form was not always used, but one often finds dhd dha, ha dha, en dha, etc. instead.