Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/182

 THE CONSTRUCTION OF SENTENCES 163 of two sorts of dependent clauses may be seen in the following sentence from Boson's Nebbaz Gerriau. The English is : "If that learned wise man [John Keigwin] should see this [i.e. this essay], he would find reason to correct it in orthography, etc." Boson's Cornish, the spelling and division of words assimilated to that of the present grammar, is : Mar qwressa an den deskes fir-na gwelas hemma, If should [do] that man learned wise see this, ev a venja cavos fraga e ewna en scrifa- he would find why it to amend in writing- composter. correctness. In this sentence qwressa is for gwressa (third person singular of the conditional or pluperfect of the aux- iliary gwtl, to do), with the initial in its fourth state after mar. Boson writes it markressa, all in one word. Fraga e ewna is an example of a variant of the second form of dependent sentence. The principal verb ev a venja cavos is in the impersonal auxiliary form, and of the two dependent clause verbs, one, qwressa an den deskes fir-na gwelas,, is in the inflected auxiliary form, and the other, ewna, is infinitive. In a relative sentence, if the relative pronoun is the subject, the verb appears to be in the impersonal form. That is to say, it is always in the form of the third person singular, and does not show any agreement with its antecedent, whatever person or number that may be in. The other peculiarities of relative sentences are given in Chapter VII. 4. 2. " Instead of using the conjunction that with another verb in the indicative mood, as in most Euro- pean languages, it is usual to put the second verb in the infinitive preceded by the personal pronoun, as