Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/159

 140 GRAMMAR VI. THE FUTURE. In older Cornish the present, whether in its inflected, impersonal, or auxiliary form, was commonly used to express a future, and sometimes the subjunctive was used as a future. Some verbs have an extra tense which is a specially inflected future, resembling one form of the Breton conditional, as follows : Singular. Plural. 1. carvym, carvyv. i. carvon. 2. carvyth. 2. carvough. 3. carvyth, carvo. 3. carvons. This is more commonly found in the impersonal form, mi, tt, etc., a garvyth. It is formed, as may be clearly seen, by suffixing the future or subjunctive of bos, to be (perhaps in its sense of <f to have " *), to the root of the verb. (Cf. the suffixing of the present of avoir to an infinitive to form a future in French, je parler-ai, and its unamalgamated prototype, the future form, resurgere habent, in the very low Latin of the antepenultimate verse of the Athanasian Creed.) But in late Cornish the regular future was formed by the auxiliary verb menny, to will : Mednav vi cara, etc. Mi, ti, etc., a vedn cara, etc. The forms mednama, menta, usually in the second state of the initial, are used for interrogative and dependent sentences : A vednama caret ? shall I love ? Mar menta cara, if thou wilt love. The negative is either ni vednav vi cara or mi ni vednav cara. The latter form, with the v of the termination omitted as being nearly inaudible, is used in Carew's 1 See Chapter XIV.