Page:Morris-Jones Welsh Grammar 0333.png

§ 179 the un&shy;accented was, as in the case of athematic stems, the commoner form; e.g. ni chēl grudd gystudd colon prov. ‘the cheek does not hide the sorrow of the heart’.

There is no *‑ed, since the them. prim, ending was ‑ēit, not *‑eti § 179 iii (5). The strong form of the above verbs is taken over from the ‑ī‑ conju&shy;gation; as rhedid car gan anwaered prov. ‘a car will run down hill’. (So Ir. berid for *beri, with anal, ‑d.)

The W. 3rd pl. ‑ant is from Kelt, ‑anti < Ar. *‑ə‑nti which was common to the ‑ā‑ and ‑ī‑ conju&shy;gations; see ii above. There is no trace of the thematic *‑o‑nti, because ‑ont came to be associ&shy;ated with other tenses. The O.W. ‑int, Ml. W. ‑ynt, may represent the athem. *‑enti or the middle *‑ontai, more probably the latter; ‑(h)awnt is certainly formed after ‑(h)awt.

The 2nd sg. ‑yẟ (which is the oldest form of the ending ‑y, later ‑i) seems to come from accented forms of itera&shy;tives in ‑éi̯e, or denomi&shy;natives and deverba&shy;tives in ´‑i̯e- the commonest stem-suffix in the Ar. languages. In Kelt, from *karo‑s ‘dear’ the i̯e-denom. would be *karé-i̯ū, *karé-i̯īs, *karé-i̯īt; all these would give W. keryẟ. But the 1st and 3rd sg. had more distinc&shy;tive endings, and ‑yẟ survived in the 2nd only, though there are traces of it in the 3rd, see § 173 vi (3). The latter occur in relative sentences, where the verb was prob. accented, as in Skr. The accented 2nd sg. is frequent&shy;ly used, and answered by accented na and the unacc. 1st sg.

The 1st and 2nd pl. in W. are re-formations, and it is useless to attempt to derive them from Kelt, forms. The Kelt. 2nd pl. was, them. *‑e-te, athem, *‑a-te. The former would give W. *‑ed (Ml. Bret. ‑et); to this was added the initial of the affixed pron. chwi, thus *caret‑ch$w̯$ > *carewch by loss of t, cf. iii (1); at this stage a 1st pl. *caren was formed on the analogy of the 2nd pl., with the initial of the aff. pron. ni ‘we’; this form is attested in O.W. iben, and survives to this day in West Gwyn. in caran beside carwn ‘we love’ (Gwyn. ‑an = ‑en). As the 2nd pl. clashed with the impf. it was re-formed with the vowels of the 2nd sg. thus *cerywch > cerwch ‘ye love’; sub&shy;sequent&shy;ly the vowel of this ending intruded into the 1st pl., giving carwn ‘we love’. A statement in the 2nd pers. is always answered in the 1st, hence the influence of the forms on one another in the less used pl.

(1) In Pr. Ar. an ending *‑r- formed impersonals. It survived only in Indo-Iranian and Italo-Keltic. In Skr. it takes the form ‑uḥ (before a vowel ‑ur) in the active, and ‑re, ‑ire in the middle; ‑uḥ repre&shy;sents *‑r̥ or *‑r̥s, Meillet Intr.² 203. These endings in Skr. form the 3rd pl.; this is natural enough when one considers that there is only a shade of distinc&shy;tion in meaning between the impers. dywedir ‘on dit’ and the 3rd pl. dywedant ‘they say’.

In Italo‑Kelt. it was used in two ways; first, it might be added to the tense-stem, as Umbrian subj. ferar ‘on portera’, pres. ind. ier ‘on va’, Oscan subj. sakrafír (with últiumam for object) ‘cysegrer’. Secondly it was added to the 3rd sg. or pl. middle, and then extended