Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/212

Rh are the commonest of the nouns. The epithets may be:

1. Adjectives, signifying size, colour, position, etc., e.g. mêr, mear, vear, great; bîan, dean, vean, little; glas, blue; dew, black; gwin, gwidin, widn, white; gwartha, wartha, gwarra, upper; gollas, gullas, wallas, lower, etc., in agreement with the noun.

2. Other nouns in the appositional genitive.

3. Proper names.

4. Adjectives or nouns preceded by the article an, the, or by a preposition such as war, on.

The following points should be considered:—

1. The gender of the noun. Of the nouns mentioned above, tre, ros, car, lan, whêl, hal, goon, carrack, crows, fenton, kelly, trigva, mellan, bron, tor, are feminine, so that the initial of the adjective epithet is changed to the second state. This may often, more or less, determine whether the epithet is an adjective or a noun in the genitive. Thus, in the name Tremaine, we may be sure that the second syllable is not an adjective or it would be Trevaine, so the meaning is not, as one would think, "the stone house," not a very distinguishing epithet in Cornwall, but probably the "house of the stones," i.e. of some stone circle or other prehistoric remains. Sometimes, however, the initial of an appositional genitive, and sometimes that of an epithet of a masculine noun is irregularly changed in composition.

2. The stress accent of the compound. This is of great importance, especially in determining whether an article or preposition intervenes between the noun and its epithet, and also, in the rare cases in which it occurs, in deciding whether the epithet may not precede the noun. The stress accent is almost invariably on the epithet, and it is astonishing to see how even in