The Scottish Celtic review

—The Laivs (ifAusIaut in Irl.-^h. 29illIrish.inj- view of certain forms, ou account of the plionctic laws ofEbel said in liis article on declension in Celtic: "The oldesthistorical forms of the Irish, in regard to the conservation of theauslaut, are, at most, and even scarcely upon a level with the NewHigh German " (cf , among other places, Beitr., i. 105). Those whodo not remember what Ebel has said in other places, may easilymisunderstand him here. For, notwithstanding all mutilations,the Irish forms have retained more distinct traces of what theyonce were than even the Gothic forms; and Ebel himself has donemuch to clear up the topics that come here under consideration.The Celtic languages have the peculiarity, that the words in asentence have the power of mutually influencing each other. TheSandhi rules in Sanskrit admit in this respect of only remotecomparison.For, whilst in Sanskrit the words of a sentence, withoutdistinction, are, so to speak, soldered one to another, thewords in Celtic influence each other only when they are closelyconnected in the construction, and constitute, as it were, onegrammatical formula.Such formulas are:—article and substantive, posse.'^sive pronounand substantive, numeral and substantive, substantive and genitivefollowing, substantive and demonstrative particle therewithconnected, substantive and adjective, prej)osition and the caseformbelonging to it, preposition and verbal-form (in composition),verbal particle (including the negative) and verbal-form, pronominal-object(infixed pronoun) and verbal-form, relative pronounand verbal-form.That these formuliB were regaided as one united word isevident from this, that in ancient Gaelic MSS. they were frequentlywritten without any separation of the words ; as, e.g.,innamban (of the women ; inna gen. pi. of the ai-ticle, ban gen.pi. of hen, woman, wife), nivicharat (non me amant; ni thenegative, m pron. of the first person, carat third pi. pres.).Already in prehistoric time, when the ancient auslaut of theword was still preserved unmutilated, these formul?e must havebeen in use as compound words ; since the auslaut of the first andthe anlaut of the second part were treated, as we may clearlyrecognise, according to the phonetic laws applicable to the inlautof a simple word.Of the secondary phonetic laws, which apply to the inlaut, twoespecially come here under consideration: