Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/140

 THE VERB IN GENERAL 121 also found. Whether this is the explanation or not, we find such forms as : Pandra venta ? what wilt thou ? A wresta ? dost thou ? Mar menta, if thou wilt. Pandra wrama ? what shall I do ? There are some few differences between the inflected verb of the earlier MSS. and that of modern Cornish, and among other changes the lighter termination en or yn of the first person plural, and ens or yns of the third person plural, in some cases had changed by Lhuyd's time to on or an, and ons or ans, but probably really the vowel is obscure. There was also considerable un- certainty about the modification of the vowel. Even in the early MSS. the change of vowel is rather vague, but the general rule seems to have been that when the termination has a thin vowel (e, t, or y), a broad root vowel (a, o, u) is changed to a thin vowel, usually in late Cornish to e (cf. the Gaelic rule of leathan le leathan agus caol le caol, broad with broad and thin with thin). But this is by no means universal, and in some tenses, as in the imperfect and pluperfect, is not found at all. There is some confusion in modern Cornish about the subjunctive or fifth tense. Norris considers that Lhuyd's subjunctive is really, except for the third person singular, the imperfect or second tense of the older MSS. But it seems to be more like a form of the present indicative, except in the third person singular, which is the old subjunctive. Lhuyd's change of the first person singular to am instead of av is not uncommon in certain verbs of late Cornish, when this tense is used in a subjunctive clause. The inflected verb at the beginning of a sentence is often preceded in Middle Cornish by the verbal particle y