[Spellyans] Plural of 'lo'

[nicholas williams]

The singular is attested in MC only, as far as I am aware, in the  
dog's name lonk-y-lo "swallow his spoon" BM  3226.
Nance (1938) considers Lhuyd's leu to be a late contraction of *loyow.
The pair lo ~ loyow are similar to  ro "gift" ~ royow "gifts" x 8 in TH.
Neil's dictionary gives lo "spoon", pl. lew.
The final segment is -u for earlier -ow. How do we then explain the  
shift in the root from o > e?
It would seem to have been provoked by a following [j]. In which case  
the underlying shape
may well have been *loyow.
It is not unlikely that the original form of the word was *loy (W  
llwy; cf. C moy, W mwy; C. oy, W wy), plural loyow. In which case lo  
could have arisen by false division from the plural *loyow.

Nicholas



On 16 Kev 2009, at 15:54, Herbie Blackburn wrote:

> Jon wrote:
> >George (2009) gives the plural of lo (spoon) as "loyow". The only  
> attestation that I have so far come across for the plural is Lhuyd  
> (1707: 48c) "leụ". Is the spelling "loyow" really justified?
> >Jon
> Only - Welsh : ‘llwy(-au)’. Breton ‘loa(-iou)’, don’t know  
> about historical Cornish attestations, other than Lhuyd.
> Herbie
> _____________________________________
> Dr. Jon Mills,
> School of European Culture and Languages,
> University of Kent
>
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