The Scottish Celtic review

—The Laics of Audiiut hi li-isli. 37ill the 3rd sing. pert". Ik'iI, Im, eiidcil origiiiall}' in a vowel (ro hoichocad, fuit bellum), but it was also further introduced where thephonetic cause did not exist. In the modern language thisaspiration has been preserved oidy after that 3rd sing, perfect ha,and after no other verbal-form (O'Donovan's Ir. Gramm., p. 386).Like the aspiration, so the n also enters in the older languageafter word-forms, to which it originally did not belong (SeeB. vi.).II.r, .s, t, or il with a preceding long vowel stood originally inauslaut. The length of the vowel has been shortened. The consonantwas retained only, if an ;•. Also, an original short vowelwith r is preserved as a special syllable. Aspiration neverappears after the forms that come under this head. These comeunder consideration :1. The nom. sing, of the names of relationship. The moreprimative cir (er, dr), represented by Old Ir. ;/, ur ; e.g. athir =Gr. TTUTi'ip, Lat. jjciter; viathir=Dor. fxarrp, Lat. riuder; brdthir= Gr. (ppuTi'ip, Lat. /ra^er; si«.?'=Lat. soror (for svesor), Z. 262;2. The preposition etcr, etir, for prehistoric e«fer=Lat. inter,Skr. untar ; Z. 6-56;3. The nom. and ace. plur. of feminine stems in d (Z. 244).*Original as, represented by Old Ir. a, seldom e, e.g. tuatha =Goth, thiudos. Old. Sax. thiodd ; j'M/i« = Goth. runos; mnd(women), for h'nd, hana (nom. sing, ben — Bceot. j3avd) = Ved.gnd.s. Ebel has advanced the opinion (Beitr. zur Vergl. Spr. i.181) that -a in the nom. plur. originated out of di ("as in Gr. andLat."), but as he did not introduce it into the Gramm. Celt. (p. 24-5),he probably abandoned it.Against this opinion there is to be said(1) that original di would not have been preserved as a specialsyllable (as proved, for example, by the dat. sing, tuaith), and(2) that the nom. plur. fern, of the article inna or na nevercauses aspiration (inna tiiatha, inma caillicha), consequently,it mu.st have ended in a consonant, i.e. in «*•. For the Gaulishnom. plur. of this declension, see H. D'Arbois de JubainviUe's" La Dt^cliuaison Latine en Gaule," p. 23.The neutral stems in a follow, in this case, already in Old Irishthe analogy of feminines : dliyeda (laws, nom. sing, dliged, fordliijet-um, related to Goth, didc/s, K. Slav. dlUgil debitum, and* For the gen. sing, of these stems see Excursus II. 12.