From substantives: ferreus, aureus, eburnus, eburneus; civicus, bell'icus; civilis, hostilis, virilis, aqua tilis; chartaceus, papyr aceus; tribun icius; let alis lectualis; consularis; nat'al·icius ; medi· ocris; muliebris, funebris; campestris; honestus; domesticus; intestinus; amatorius; regius; honor us; imbell is; can'inus; cedrinus; osti arius, mol end arius; aquosus; montanus; montani'osus; fraudulentus; votivus; hesternus, aeternus, longi turnus; diurnus, nocturnus; finitimus, maritimus, legitimus; auratus, turritus, calceatus.

From other adjectives, diminutives are formed in -ulus, -olus, -culus, -ellus; from names of places adjectives are formed in -ensis, -īnus, -at-, and -ānus; and from names of nations in -icus, -ius.

90. There are causative verbs formed with facio, as patefacio; there are no other verbs formed by composition except with prepositions.

91. The accentuation of Latin differs somewhat from that of Greek. Words of two or more syllables never have the accent on the last syllable; but the accent, as in Greek, never goes farther back than the antepenult. The accent of a monosyllable is circumflex, if the vowel be long by nature and not merely by position. If the penult be accented it is the circumflex that is used if the penult be naturally long, and the last syllable be short, otherwise it is the acute. The accentuation of antepenult requires that penult be short.1

CELTIC.

92. Celtic speech was from ancient times divided into two languages, which may be called Irish and British. These differed from each other more than any of the Teutonic languages, though not so much as Lithuanian and Sclavonic.2 The Irish language includes the Gaelic of Scotland.3 The British includes Welsh, Cornish, and Armoric or Breton; and from the language of the Britons that of the Gauls differed little, according to Tacitus. This probably implies that the Gauls and Britons could understand each other, and all the remains of the language of the former confirm the supposition of such close correspondence.7

4

6

In the Celtic languages, more than in any others of the IndoEuropean family, speech is vocal, and the consonant is slighted in comparison with the vowel; so that the weakness of the consonant and the predominance of the vowel characterise all Celtic speech. This common character, however, is combined with a certain difference existing between the Irish branch and the British, which has caused the decay of the consonants to follow somewhat different laws in these two branches.

The pronunciation of the Irish consonant betrays a tendency rather to indolent utterance, that of the British rather to soft utterance. The former tends to neglect to close the organs, so that the breath is suffered to pass through; the latter to close the organs softly and

with gentle pressure of breath. The former, in uttering a consonant after a vowel, only half performs the required act of utterance. The latter, in uttering consonants which concurrence tends to harden, relaxes the muscular tension in a gentler contact, which gives a sense of softness; while the breath is sounded in the throat rather than pressed on the organs of the mouth.

93. The vocal character which belongs to all the Celtic languages is to be seen in the frequency of diphthongs and of what may be called semi-diphthongs, and in the way in which the vowel dominates over the consonant which is in contact with it, so that the vowels on either side of the consonant or consonants tend to affect each other with mutual assimilation. Thus in Irish, "every consonant, whether in its primary or aspirated state, has a broad or a slender sound, according to the nature of the vowel which it precedes or follows. When it precedes or follows a broad vowel it has always a certain fixed broad sound, and when it precedes or follows a slender vowel it has a fixed small or slender sound, which will presently be described. This influence of the vowels over the consonants has given rise to a general rule or canon of orthography which distinguishes the Irish from all the European languages, namely, that every consonant or combination of consonants must always stand between two broad vowels or two slender vowels." "" 1 The broad vowels are a, o, u, the slender e and i. The slender utterance of the consonants is that which they get by incorporating with them y immediately after them (Def. 29, 30). This makes the post-palatals palatal and the dentals ante-palatal; on the labials it produces less effect.2 But if, according to the above, this effect is real, then the above rule is not a mere rule of writing, but a law of utterance; and when it was not observed in writing, the writing was not orthography, as it did not correctly represent the utterance.

Sometimes, in accordance with this law, a broad or slender vowel is introduced next to the consonants, to be lightly uttered in connection with the vowel of the syllable and to correspond with the analogous vowel on the other side of the consonants. Sometimes it enters into the vowel of the syllable and changes it, making it slender or broad as the case may be.

In the southern parts of Ireland the simple vowels are apt to get a diphthongal or semi-diphthongal utterance by virtue of the predominance of the vowel over the consonant. This happens before consonants which require much breath, the vocalisation being carried on with the initial breath of the consonants, and the vowel becoming closer as the organs close to utter the consonants. Thus a before m, ll, nn, or n, in monosyllabic words, and before nt, ns, in the first syllable of disyllables, is pronounced in the southern half of Ireland like the German au or nearly like the English ow in how, and a before b, like ou in ounce ;3 i before ll and ls is pronounced, like ei (Eng. ĕ'ee), very slender in the south-east, but in the south-west like i (Eng. ee); o before m, l, nn, in monosyllables, and before gor d' in the first syllable of disyllables, is pronounced in the southern half of Ireland 2 Ibid. p. 28-39.

1 O'Donovan, Irish Gram., p. 3.

3 Ibid. p. 10.

4 Ibid. p. 12.

4

1

like ou in ounce. For the strength which final consonants have in a monosyllable causes an increase of the breath required by the liquids compared with what they take in other positions. Nasalised or aspirated mutes in that position stop the breath too strongly for such an effect, but in other positions the more breathing ones produce it. In the other parts of Ireland the vowels retain their simple utterance.1 The above-mentioned rule of later Irish, "broad to broad, and slender to slender," is to be found exemplified, though not regularly observed, in the ancient Irish manuscripts. Sometimes it is the vowel preceding the consonants which infects (as Zeuss calls it) the vowel that follows them, and sometimes the vowel following infects the vowel preceding. In the former case a when infected becomes ai e or i, e becomes ea a or o, i becomes e, o becomes oi or ui, u becomes ui. In the latter case a becomes ea, i becomes ai, o becomes eo.2 There are also other infections not included in the above rule, that of a to au or o- by u in the next syllable; that of u to o by a or o in the next syllable, and that of e to ei or i by e or i in the next syllable.

Sometimes the infecting vowel has been dropped, sometimes the cause of the infection cannot be found. And the variability in the vowels seems to have led to uncertainty and incorrectness in the spelling.2

The long vowels are subject to similar infections, and from this cause, and also perhaps from the same cause which has occasioned the diphthongal utterance of the vowels in the south of Ireland, the long vowels are changed into diphthongs and triphthongs. For even vowels, which were short in ancient Irish, have become long before combinations of liquids or of s with other consonants.4

The vocal tendency, however, does not prevent radical vowels from being sometimes dropped in words which have got an increase in the end or the beginning; and verbal inflections of more than one syllable, and derivative elements, drop an initial vowel, unless they are preceded by a concurrence of two liquids or two mutes, or a mute with a liquid in the second place.5

The ancient Irish manuscripts distinguish the diphthongs from the infected vowels by accentuating the first vowel of the former. The following diphthongs occur, ai, ae, oi, oe, au, oo, oe, oi, ui, eu, eo.? 94. The infection of the British vowels is the same as that of the Irish, and of scarcely less extent.8

The long vowels in British have undergone changes which seem to indicate a tendency to close them.

A has not been preserved in British, but has been changed in Welsh to au, which subsequently became aw, or when suffixes were added, ō; in Cornish to ea, eo, eu, ey; in Armoric to ō, eu, ē: ē has been preserved only in some Welsh examples; it has been changed in Welsh generally to oi, ui, wy; in Cornish to ui, oi, oy; in Armoric to oi, oe, ui, oa: remains, though sometimes changed in Welsh to ei: ō is found only in one or two examples, having generally become ū; and u has generally changed to 7.9

British has much the same diphthongs as Irish, except that in the second place they scarcely admit o, but have u instead.1

95. Already before the Roman times the old aspirates had generally become medials both in Irish and British, the breath being cut off from them, probably in that weakening of the consonants which has been mentioned as a characteristic of Celtic speech (92). Some few

2

still remained; but the only aspirate preserved in Gallic was the surd aspirate f.3

Afterwards changes came in the Celtic consonants, which, as they were due to the elements of utterance with which they came in contact, Zeuss has called infections. They differ somewhat in Irish and British; and even when the effect on the consonant is the same in both, the different circumstances under which this identical effect is produced in Irish and in British show that the action which causes it is different in the two cases (107).

96. In old Irish, as in new, the liquids, when they stood singly between vowels within a word or after vowels at the end of a word, were uttered with an undecided closure of the organs, so that in uttering m the breath passed through, and it became a close w; the other liquids were not aspirated, but they were pronounced lightly.5 In the end, however, of some words and suffixes n and m retain their full pronunciation though they follow a vowel and stand by themselves; which is doubtless due to some superior strength in their original form.

There are also in Irish peculiar laws in reference to n.

Within a word n is dropped before s, f, and the tenues, and a radical vowel preceding is lengthened, except the final n of in, and sometimes of con in composition, or that of a root which has a suffix beginning with one of those letters.6

The following words drop their final n before words beginning with s, f, or a tenuis, namely: an, the nominative and accusative singular neuter of the article, and its genitive plural innan or nan, the possessive pronouns of the three plural persons, viz., arn, barn, an, the relative pronoun an, the prepositions in (in), kon (with), ren (before), iarn (after), the conjunction aran (that), and the numerals 7 to 10, which end in en.

The final n of these words becomes m before b, and before the liquids is generally assimilated to them.7

N when weakly uttered, if followed immediately by a vowel, becomes nd; probably because the nasalisation fails, and the breath for sounding the vowel pressing forward through the mouth, catches the closure of n before it is opened, and d is pronounced. Sometimes, probably because a dental surd consonant has been dropped immediately after n, the closure is strengthened, and being carried on beyond the nasalisation, t is pronounced before a vowel, so that n becomes nt.

97. Of the spirants, the ancient Gallic language

seems not to have

Ibid. pp. 88, 89.

6 Ibid. p. 52.

had has a radical,' but it had s by itself and in x; the x being represented by s in Irish, by h and x in British.2 The original h was lost in Celtic, no doubt in the same weakening of the consonants which destroyed the aspirates (95).

As a radical, h is not found in Irish, but only as a breathing in the utterance of an initial vowel,3 or the last state of an infected t (99).

4

Y has vanished from Irish, being absorbed into vowels; and v or w has disappeared from Irish, being absorbed into vowels in the middle and end of words, and changed to ƒ in the beginning. For when a consonant is lost in its softer positions it tends to be hardened in its harder positions, because it loses the softening associations of utterance connected with the former (60, 101).

S in the middle and end of words, except when doubled or joined with another consonant, is destroyed by the infection in ancient Irish; except in certain lengthened roots, and in certain formative elements. In the former the length of the vowel probably caused its infecting power to become weak in the end of its utterance, and in the latter the significance of the s, or the original form of the element, may have given it strength to hold its ground. It must have been weakly uttered, or it would not have perished under infection (99).

Zeuss says that sometimes s is added for euphony, as before the article in, when it follows the truncated form of the verb substantive, and before the article in, an, ind, naib, na, following the prepositions in, kon, ren, iarn (which then drop n), or the prepositions la, fri, tre. But how can s be added for euphony after a consonant which has then to be dropped for euphony? Is it not more likely that these are forms of the article strengthened with the Irish demonstrative element s?

S sometimes arises from k or g, and this change is independent of the adjacent vowels. It is probably a case of the general consonantal weakening, which might specially affect the post-palatals, as the back part of the tongue acts with least facility, and lead them to give up the tension of the post-palatal closure; the utterance then becoming s, because there was no h.

The h which occurs in the modern dialects before initial vowels after the article na, or after prepositions ending in a vowel, is merely a breathing to distinguish the beginning of the word.

98. The medials are infected in Irish in the middle and end of almost all words when not doubled or combined with another consonant; the infection being that the closure of the organs is not complete, and the breath passes through, so that the consonant is uttered with an aspiration.7

In the ancient Irish manuscripts there appear also the beginnings. of another infection of the medials, which in the later language spread more widely. These in the ancient language are nasalised and assimilated after a nasal in the middle or end of a word, except that g is written after n; but in the modern Irish, in the beginning also this assimilation takes place even with g after those words ending in a nasal which have been mentioned in 96.8

1 Zeuss, p. 57.

2 Ibid. p. 58.

Ibid. pp. 60, 65-68. 7 Ibid. p. 72.

5 Ibid. pp. 60, 61, 63.
8 Ibid. pp. 74, 76.

3 Ibid. p. 59. 6 Ibid. p. 61.