An Introduction to Early Welsh - Arthur Pendragon of Wales

22 THE NOUN. [25.
THE NOUN.
NUMBERS AND CASES.
25. In Welsh the old Celtic declension is completely broken
down. Of the three genders the neuter has been lost. The dual,
which, as in Irish, is
always preceded by the numeral for two, in
some classes of nouns would phonetically have fallen together with
the singular; in Welsh this has been generalised so that the dual
(apart from forms like deu ychen two oxen} coincides in form with
the singular; a trace of the dual inflection remains in the lenation
of a following adjective, e.g. deu vul gadarn (from cadarn) two
strong mules, deu vilgi vronwynnion vrychion two whitebreasted
brindled greyhounds. In the regular inflexion there remains only
one case for each number; in the singular this corresponds sometimes
to the old nominative, e.g. car friend
'= Ir. carae, sometimes
to the form of the oblique cases, e.g.
breuant windpipe
= Ir. brage,
g. bragat; a few traces of lost cases still survive in phrases, e.g.
meudwy hermit servant (lit. of God), where dwy is the genitive of
duw
; erbynn against = Ir. ar
( chiunn), where pynn (from *pendl,
from *pendu) is the dative of perm head; peunyd every day,
peunoeth every night, where peun-, which in O.W. would be
*poun-, comes from *popn-, the old accusative singular of pob
every.
SYNTAX OF THE CASES.
26. As in Irish, the nominative may stand absolutely
at the
beginning of the sentence to introduce the subject of discourse, e.g.
y wreic honn ym penn pythewnos a mis y byd beichogi idi, lit.
this woman, at the end of a fortnight and a month there will be
conception to her. In prose the genitive follows the noun on which
it
depends, e.g. enw y mab the name of the son; in poetry it may
precede, e.g. byt lywaydur = llywaydur byt the ruler of the world;
sometimes, as in Irish, it is used after an adjective meaning with
respect to a thing, e.g. ny bydy anuodlawn y phryt thou wilt not