The Scottish Celtic review

;198 The Laws of Auslaut in Irish.The adjectival stems in i had even as early as Old Irish givenup the neuter form of the nom. plural (with which the ace. plur.agrees), and formed this case in the neuter in the same way as inthe masc. and fem.; e.g., mathl (maith; good), cosniaili {cosmilconsimilis), for the three genders.6. A greater mutilation than we should expect has occurred inthe dative sing, of the stems in as.Of tech (house) the dat. is tig.If we start, however, from a prehistoric tegesi or tegis-i, correspondingto Gr. yei/e'i, we should expect tigi as the historic form.It is to be remarked that the dative sing, of all consonantal stem.s,shows a remaikable tendency to an irregular shortening. Besidethe regular dat. do bethaid, from bethti (life), appears do hethu(Z. 256) ; beside catkraig, from cathir (city), ajipears cathir(Z. 2C0), &c. In regard to the form tig, it has also, perhaps, tobe taken into consideration, that the supposititious tigi would havebeen the only dat. sing, which would have differed from the ace.sing, of the same word by having an additional syllable. Cf dat.Jiur, ace. fer' (stem vira, man); dat. hiuth, ace. hith, stem bitu,world) ; dat. tuaith, ace. tuaith (stem tautd, city) ; dat. faith, ace.fdith (stem vdti, propheta) ; dat. menmain, ace. menmain (stemmenman, sense, mind), and others.7. Still more remarkable is the mutilation which the gen. sing,of the masc. and neut.-stems in a shows. From eich (equ'i), maic(filii) we can first construct only preceding forms terminating in i:equ-i, maqu-i. Such foims have not only been authenticatedas Gaulish, but also occur in Irish Ogham-Inscriptions: Gaul.Segomari, Ogh. maqi (Stokes in Beitr. ii. 102). Since, moreover,aspiration takes place (cf Z. 181) after old Irish genitives of thiskind, they must have had, fi'om the earliest times, a vocalicauslaut. The Lat. gen. equi, which terminated originally in s,must not, therefore, be brought forward hei-e, but the Goth. gen.Jiskis, the is of which is usually explained by Skr. -asya, may.But even the Gothic shows here a greater mutilation than weshould expect, when we look to the 2nd sing, imperative nasei.Cf, however, Leskien's "Die Declination," p. 30. Skr. afv-asyashould be represented in the Old Irish of the Manuscripts by ech-i(as an intermediate form eq-ese, eq-isi would have to be assumed).But here, likewise, a further weakening has taken place, as itwere vTrepfxopov, owing, perhaps, to the fact, that all singularformsof the stems in a have only the flexio interna: nom. ech,gen. eich, dat. eoch, ace. ech, voc. eich. As to the possessive pro-