Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/47

Rh aspirates were merged into the mediæ them&shy;selves, so that b and bh appear in Celtic as b, d and dh as d, g and gh as g, and ꬶ and ꬶh as g. The Balto-Slavonic, in this matter, shares the peculi&shy;arity of the Celtic.

All the explosives, when intervocalic, are “aspirated” in Gaelic—p to ph, b to bh (= v), t to th (= h), d to dh (= y), c to ch, g to gh, (= y); the cor&shy;respond&shy;ing Welsh changes are the tenues to mediæ, and the mediæ to f, dd, and nil in the case of g. Inter&shy;vocalic preserved explo&shy;sives in Gaelic arise from a doubling of the explosive, the cause of which in many cases is obscure. The following are the leading cases and causes of inter&shy;vocalic G. mutes:

(1) Doubling of the explosive in the course of inflection or word-building.


 * a. Inflection. The participle passive in ‑te preserves the t or d of the root as t; thus [caith gives caithte,] bàth (for bàdh) gives bàite, ràdh gives ràite, etc.


 * b. Word-building. The prepositional prefixes which end or ended in a consonant preserve the succeed&shy;ing explosive; even vowel-ending prepo&shy;sitions like air (*are), aith- (*ati) do the same, if the accent is on the prepo&shy;sition. Thus—abair is for ad-ber, aitreabh is for ad-treb, aidich is for ad-dam, faic for ad-ces‑, agair for ad-gar. In the way of affixes, we have ruiteach from rud‑t and ruicean from rud‑c, creid from *cred-dhô; compare the compounds boicionn, laoicionn, and craicionn.

(2) After sunk n or m. Thus deud comes from dṇt, and so with ceud, teud; ceud, first, from *cento‑, so seud; eug from ṇko‑, etc.

(3) After sunk spirant z. This is assured for zd, as in brod (*broz-do‑, Norse broddr), cead, gad, maide, nead; but zg giving g is doubtful—eagal seems for *es-gal or *ex-gal‑, beag for ꬶvezgo‑s (Lat. vescus), mèag for mezgo‑.

(4) Cases corresponding to double explosives in other languages: cat and Lat. catta (borrowing?), cac and Gr. κάκκη. Compare also slug.

(5) Doubtful cases. Many of these cases can be satisfactorily explained as due to suffixes immediate&shy;ly affixed to consonant-ending roots. Thus brat may be for brat-to‑, trod for trud-do‑, ìoc for *yak-ko‑, breac for mṛg-ko‑. Even suffixes in ‑bho- and ‑ꬶo- (Eng. k in walk) are not unknown, and they might account for reub (*reib-bo‑, *reib-bho‑, Eng. reap, rip), slug for slug-go‑, etc. Dr Whitley Stokes has given a different theory founded on the analogy of a Teutonic phonet&shy;ical law, stated