Welsh morphology

The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton.

Modern Welsh can be written in two varieties — Colloquial Welsh or Literary Welsh [For a complete treatment of literary Welsh, see "A Grammar of Welsh" (1980) by Stephen J. Williams] . The grammar described on this page is for Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in the 1588 translation of the Bible and can be seen in formal writing.

Initial consonant mutation

:"Related article: Lenition"

Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages, although there is no evidence of it in the ancient Continental Celtic languages of the early first millennium. The first consonant of a word in Welsh may change depending on grammatical context (such as when the grammatical object directly follows the grammatical subject), or when preceded by certain words, e. g. _cy. "i", _cy. "yn", and _cy. "a". Welsh has three mutations: the soft mutation, the nasal mutation, and the aspirate mutation. These are also represented in writing:

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The Welsh masculine-feminine gender distinction is reflected in the pronouns. There is, consequently, no word corresponding to English "it", and the choice of _cy. "e" or _cy. "hi" depends on the grammatical gender of the antecedent.

The English dummy "it" construction in phrases like "it's raining" or "it was cold last night" also exists in Welsh and other Indo-European languages like French. Unlike other masculine-feminine languages, which often default to the masculine pronoun in the construction, Welsh uses the feminine singular _cy. "hi", thus producing sentences like:

: _cy. "Mae hi'n bwrw glaw.": It's raining.

: _cy. "O'dd hi'n oer neithiwr.": It was cold last night.

Notes on the forms

Third-person masculine singular forms _cy. "o" and _cy. "fo" are heard in North Wales, while _cy. "e" and _cy. "fe" are heard in South Wales.

The pronoun forms _cy. "i, e", and _cy. "o" are used as subjects after a verb. In the inflected future of the verbs _cy. "mynd, gwneud, dod", and _cy. "cael", first-person singular constructions like _cy. "do fi" may be heard. _cy. "I, e", and _cy. "o" are also used as objects with compound prepositions, for example _cy. "o mlaen o" 'in front of him'. _cy. "Fi, fe", and _cy. "fo" are used after conjunctions and non-inflected prepositions, and also as the object of an inflected verb:

: _cy. "Weloch chi fo dros y Sul?": Did you see him over the weekend?

_cy. "Fe" and _cy. "fo" exclusively are used as subjects with the inflected conditional:

: _cy. "Dylai fe brynu ti un newydd.": He ought to buy you a new one.

Both _cy. "i, e", and _cy. "o" and _cy. "fi, fe", and _cy. "fo" are heard with inflected prepositions, as objects of verbal nouns, and also as following pronouns with their respective possessive adjectives:

: _cy. "Wyt ti wedi gweld e/fe heddiw?": Have you seen him today?

: _cy. "Alla i ddim cael hyd i fy allweddi i/fi.": I can't find my keys.

The use of first-person singular _cy. "mi" is limited in the spoken language, appearing in _cy. "i mi" "to/for me" or as the subject with the verb _cy. "ddaru", used in a preterite construction.

_cy. "Ti" is found most often as the second-person singular pronoun, however _cy. "di" is used as the subject of inflected future forms, as a reinforcement in the imperative, and as following pronoun to the possessive adjective _cy. "dy ..." "your ..."

_cy. "Ti" vs. _cy. "chi"

_cy. "Chi", in addition to serving as the second-person plural pronoun, is also used as a singular in formal situations. Conversely, _cy. "ti" can be said to be limited to the informal singular, such as when speaking with a family member, a friend, or a child. This usage corresponds closely to the practice in other European languages; however, Welsh has a more complex system, involving a third form, _cy. "chdi", used almost exclusively in the language's northern varieties.

Reflexive pronouns

The reflexive pronouns are formed with the possessive adjective followed by _cy. "hun" "self". There is variation between North and South forms.

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In certain expressions, _cy. "hyn" may represent "now" and _cy. "hynny" may represent "then".

Verbs

In Welsh, the majority of tenses make use of an auxiliary verb, usually _cy. "bod" "to be". Its conjugation is dealt with in Irregular Verbs below.

There are four periphrastic tenses in Welsh which make use of _cy. "bod": present, imperfect, future, and conditional. The preterite, future, and conditional tenses have a number of periphrasitic constructions, but Welsh also maintains inflected forms of these tenses, demonstrated here with _cy. "talu" 'pay'.

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_cy. "Bod" also has a conditional, for which there are two stems::

The forms _cy. "caeth, caethon, caethoch" often appear as _cy. "cafodd, cawson, cawsoch" in writing, and in places in Wales these are also heard in speech.

In the conditional, there is considerable variation between the North and South forms of these four irregular verbs.:

Prepositions

In Welsh, prepositions frequently change their form when followed by a pronoun. These are known as inflected prepositions. Most of them, such as _cy. "dan", follow the same basic pattern:

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There is some dialectal variation, particularly in the first and second person singular forms. In some places one may hear _cy. "dano i", "danot ti", or _cy. "danach chi".

The majority of prepositions trigger the soft mutation.

Notes

References

*King, G. (2003). "Modern Welsh". Oxford: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28270-5