The Scottish Celtic review

.Tlie Laws nf Audunt in Irish. 195for prehistoric bitav-as; tech (house), stem teyuf!, gen. tige, forprehistoric teges-as or tegis-as.Here also I differ from Ebel and Stokes (Beitr. zur Vergl. Spr.i. 177, 340; see, however, vi. 22(3), in that I do not recognise anynecessity for assuming contracted i)revious-forms. Also herecontraction seems to me to be foreign to Irish.It is worthy of notice that the forms in o of the genitive sing,of the stems in i and ii are clearly the oldest, although forms in aare found side by side with them, even in the most ancient MSS.(Z. 234, 238, 250). This vowel modification might be accountedfor in tt-stems by the influence of the once existing v,— e.g., hethofor bitav-as ; but the i-stems show the same peculiarity. Therefore,I am inclined to recognise in this vowel modification theinfluence of the termination as, the a of which may have inclinedtowards o. This slight modification could impart itself here moreeasily to the vowel of the pi-eceding syllable, because the twovowels, after the loss of the spirant, came into immediate contact.The e in tire I would like to attribute to the progressive influenceof the slender vowel in the root-syllable.If, however, the stems in as^ terminate regularly in e in thegenitive singular, that is explained by the fact, that, in Old Irish,as in Greek and Latin, the vowel of the suflix as was attenuatedinto e in all cases, except the nom. and ace. singular.The historic flatho is explained by a prehistoric vlata-os, theh.\s,ioTic flatha by a prehistoric vlata-as, the historic tire perhapsby a prehistoric tire-as, the historic betho by a prehistoric bita-os,the historic betha by a prehistoric bita-as, the historic tige by aprehistoric tige-as.2. Similarly in accordance with B. I, G, is formed the nom. plur.of the stems in u.Orig. -av-es, -av-is (Gr. -ee?) became -ai {-i), -ae (-e), -a. Cf.Z. 240.E. g., onug (puer, stem ??io5ru) = Goth. magus, nom. plur. mogai,for prehistoric riiogav-is. A proper contraction into a diphthong,like e( in 7r?/x«?, I am not inclined to assume in Irish. I wouldrather hold, that here also the syllable which contained the slender' It is possible that the suffix as of words like tech may have been weakenedto is in all cases except the nom. singular, as Ebel assumes (Beitr. zur Vergl.Spr. vi. 226) ; but that cannot be determined with certainty. We must, however,c6nsider that these neuters have e, never a, in the genitive siugular,which seems to speak in favour of Ebel's view (nemisas, tegis-as)