<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">With tycky Duw we have a plural tycky Duwas. </span></font><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">To be consistent ought we say eskelly grehynas?</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">Although I should prefer eskelly grehyn as a plural, it is possible that traditional Cornish did indeed have a separate plural.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">In Irish the word for 'wolf' is mac tíre, literally 'son of the land'. The plural should be mic tíre 'sons of the land', but in Irish literature</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">the form is sometimes mactírí where the whole phrase is pluralised, or even mictírí where both parts are put into the plural.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">The word is not known by contemporary speakers, because there are now no wolves in Ireland.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">Similar the word for 'lizard' (Ireland's only reptile is the common lizard (Lacerta vivipara)) is earc luachra 'little creature of the rushes' or each luachra 'horse of the rushes'. The second form has arisen by popular etymology, since the word earc is otherwise unknown, whereas each uisce 'water horse' containing the element each 'horse' (cf. Cornish eb-ol 'colt'), occurs in speech.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">Earc luachra has a regular plural earca luachra. I have, however, heard the plural eachluachraí of each luachra, where the</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">whole phrase has been pluralised.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">We thus have two nouns, the second used adjectivally. Correctly the first should be pluralised but it must have</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">been common in the Celtic languages to pluralise the whole nominal phrase. If we are going to pluralise, eskelly grehynas is</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">possibly the better plural. It also possible that Lhuyd's skelli grehan was actually used as a plural, and that the singular *askal grohan or *askal grehan</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">existed, but he didn't hear it.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">There may be another example in Cornish of such a compound where the first element is in the plural. </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">The UC word kykesow means 'Cornish heath' (Erica vagans). The word is attested in dialect as kekezza. Nance thinks this is a collective. I am not so sure.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">It seems to me more likely that we are dealing here with two separate words and that the underlying form is clegh kesow 'bells of the turf', where the singular</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">would have been clogh kesow. 'Turf' in this case means 'peat', cut for fuel, and indeed various species of Erica do grow in acidic turbaries. Notice that 'bells of the turf' is a credible name for Erica vagans, because the inflorescence is in the form of little bells; compare the closely related Erica cinerea, which is often known as 'bell heather'.</span></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 18px; ">It is possible that the simplification of *clegh kesow to *kegh kesow (kekezza) may have taken place in English. The first element would, however, seem to</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">be plural, as does the second, being the plural kesow of the singular kesen 'a sod of turf'.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">I am sure there are further compounds of this kind in Cornish plant, animal and bird names.</span></font></div><div><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Baskerville" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">Nicholas</span></font></div><div><br><div><div>On 28 Du 2009, at 13:45, Ray Chubb wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>'eskellyas grehyn'.</span></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>