Page:Morris-Jones Welsh Grammar 0244.png

244 as a noun in er dy waethaf ‘in spite of thy worst’ proves the spv. to be a primitive noun; the ordinal itself is so used, as ar vyn deuẟecvet 83 ‘on my twelfth’, meaning ‘[I] with eleven others’. Zimmer ignores the difference of meaning between the eqtv. and an abstract noun; er fy nhlodi is ‘in spite of my poverty’, but er fy nhloted is ‘in spite of the degree of my poverty’; the former means ‘though I am poor’, the latter ‘however poor I may be’; the idea of ‘degree’ is common to the W. eqtv. and Bret. exclamative, and it is absurd to assert, as Zimmer does, that it is a meaning read into the form by us moderns.

Some of the irregular equatives given in the next section begin with cỿm‑, cỿn‑, cỿf‑, cỿ‑, which are the regular forms of Kelt. *kom- in composition. These do not require cɥn before them; hence Zimmer believed that cɥn before an equative in ‑(h)ed was identical with the above prefixes, and came from *kom‑. But cɥn is followed by a soft initial, and its ‑n (Ml. ‑nn) is never assimilated to the following consonant; Strachan, who accepts Zimmer’s view, explains this briefly as follows: “the form cyn- with analogical lenation became the general form before all sounds,” Intr. 29. Analogy usually causes the one to conform to the many; but the above explanation involves the assumption of the many conforming to the one in the generalization of the pre-dental form cyn- (which did not take place in any other compounds of *kom‑); it involves the same assumption in the generalization of the apparent lenition in cỿ‑w- (as in cỿ-wir); as the two things (‑n and lenition) could not co-exist in any formation from *kom‑, the two generalizations would have to be independent, so that the improbability is raised to the second degree. Further, the ‑n- of cɥn is not only old enough to provect l- and r- (§ 111 i), as in cɥn llonned, cɥn rhated (as opposed to cỿf-lawn, cỿf-ran from *kom‑), but is actually older than the separation of W. and Bret., for in Ml. Bret, it is quen. Some other explanation of cɥn must therefore be sought.

cɥn (≡ cɥ̆n, in the dialects mostly k̑ĭn) is now a proclitic, though it may be accented for emphasis; it was also a proclitic in Ml. W. for it was generally joined to the eqtv. in writing, though often separated, see below. But its ‑ɥ- shows that originally it was a separate word separately accented, and distinguishes it from all the forms of *kom‑, which have ỿ. In cỿ́n-ddrwg, cɥn forms an improper compound with the adj., and its ɥ becomes ỿ § 46 i; this is the only case of ỿ in cỿn with lenition.—While cỿf- < *kom- can be prefixed to a noun or adj. as cỿf-liw, cỿf-uwch, the form cɥn cannot be put before a noun; we cannot say *cɥn harddwch, *cɥn dlodi, *cɥn rhaid, *cɥn gymdeithas, but must say cɥn hardded, cɥn dloted, cyn rheitied, cynn gytymdeithaset  ii 419. Zimmer notes this, loc. cit. 197, but does not draw the obvious conclusion. The only word in W. not ending in ‑(h)ed used after cyn with lenition is drwg, and that is an adj. In Bret. quen, ken (ker, kel) comes before positive adjectives: quen drouc, quen bras. The inference is that forms in ‑(h)ed are