The Scottish Celtic review

32 The Laws of Aadaut in Irish.neuter nouns, e.g. even to those in i, whil.st originally it belonged,of course, only to the a-stems.Finally, the phonetic peculiarities of Iri.sh enable us to knowwhat kind of vowel .stood at last in the suppressed final syllable.To this point Ebel has already drawn attention in theBeitr. zur Vergl. Spr. i. 164.The i of the dropped last syllable has never been lost socompletely that no trace of it lias been preserved, for it hasalways entered into the preceding syllable. The regressive influenceof the preserved slender vowel on the preceding syllableis not always expressed in Old Irish writing, for we find, sideby side, fdthi and fdithi (vates), siule and sidde (seat). Theslender vowel of a lost end-syllable, on the other hand, alwaysappears in the foregoing syllable, and many forms of inflectionare clearly distinguished from others by the regular penetratingof i into the stem-syllable. This is effected, in the last syllable,not only by a primative i, but also by one originating fromweakening of other vowels. In ]n'ehistoric time, the a of the lastsyllable was weakened to e and further to i, in the same case, inwhich this happened in Latin and Greek (amice, iraripei, age,agis, agit, agite, XeXonre). After a syllable of which the vowelis a, 0, or u, one must never iufer the loss of a syllable withe or /.Though the a of an end-,syllable has thrown back its influenceinto the preceding one, yet this is not always clearly seen.Original / was always modified into e, by the action of a of thefinal .syllable, whence fer (man) for a prehistoric vir-as. In likemanner, a of the final syllable has caused the broadening of e(originating out of at) into ia; as, e.g. in dia (god) for ]3rehistoricdev-as. The influence of the once existing termination -as is remarkablein the genitive singular mdthar (matris) for niater-as,as compared with the dative and nominative singular mdth ir.Cf Ebel, Beitr. zur Vergl. Spr. i. 179. After a syllable with shorti, one must never infer the loss of one with a. The consonantbefore a lost a does not require the softened pronunciation, evenwhen a long i precedes it, e.g. in Old Irish fir (verus). Generallythe succeeding vowel determines the pronunciation of the p7'ecedingconsonant. This is shown in the later Irish bj' theexample just mentioned in the way of writing fior. In the sameway, every e, after which a syllable with a has been lost, i.swritten ca in he modern language : Old Irish dliged, New Irish