Cornish grammar
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Cornish grammar is the
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
of the
Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or ) , is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a List of revived languages, revived language, having become Extinct language, extinct as a livin ...
(' or '), an
insular Celtic language Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...
closely related to
Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...
and
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
and, to a lesser extent, to
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
, Manx and
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
. It was the main medium of communication of the
Cornish people The Cornish people or Cornish ( kw, Kernowyon, ang, Cornƿīelisċ) are an ethnic group native to, or associated with Cornwall: and a recognised national minority in the United Kingdom, which can trace its roots to the ancient Britons w ...
for much of their history until the 17th century, when a
language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceiv ...
occurred in favour of
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
. A revival, however, started in 1904, with the publication of '' A Handbook of the Cornish Language'', by
Henry Jenner Henry Jenner (8 August 1848 – 8 May 1934) was a British scholar of the Celtic languages, a Cornish cultural activist, and the chief originator of the Cornish language revival. Jenner was born at St Columb Major on 8 August 1848. He was the ...
, and since then there has been a growing interest in the language.


Initial consonant mutation

Initial
mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
is a feature shared by all the modern
Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
, in which the initial consonant of a word may change under some circumstances. In Cornish these changes take place when a word starts with one of the consonants shown in the table below; other initial consonants remain unchanged. The most common mutation occurs after the definite article ''an'', when followed by a feminine singular noun or masculine plural noun. 1 Before unrounded vowels (i, y, e, a), l, and r + unrounded vowel.
2 Before rounded vowels (o, u), and r + rounded vowel.


Nouns


Gender

Cornish
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s, like those of other Celtic languages, possess two
grammatical genders In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
, meaning that they belong to one of two groups: masculine or feminine. Sometimes the gender of a noun can be inferred from the class of words it belongs to, for example, nouns referring to males, such as ' “man, husband” or ' “bull”, or verbal nouns, such as ' “walking” and ' “being”, are masculine whereas nouns referring to females, such as ' “sister” and ' “hen”, are feminine. Nevertheless, it is often impossible to determine the gender of a noun from its form, although certain nominal suffixes have gender: * Masculine suffixes: ', '/', '/''/'', ', ', ' (mostly), ', ', ', ', ', ', ' * Feminine suffixes: ', ', ', ', ', ' There is a very small number of nouns which may be either gender, such as ' “heaven” and ' “grassland”, and is similar to its sister language
Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...
in that the noun ' “thing” takes masculine numerals above one and masculine referring pronouns but has the mutations of a feminine noun after ' “the”, ' “one” and on accompanying adjectives.


Number


Singular and plural

Most nouns have a singular and plural form, the latter deriving from the former in a number of ways. Plural forms may add an ending to a singular, such as ' “beach” to ', ' “pumpkin” to ' and ' “thief” to '. Adding an ending may be accompanied by a vowel change, as in the case of ' “wife” to ' and ' “sister” to ', or may involve a vowel change alone, for example ' “horn” to ' and ' “stone” to '.


Dual

A small number of nouns display relics of a
dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual (grammatical ...
system. These are formed by prefixing masculine ' or feminine ', both “two”, to the respective noun. Dual nouns are often parts of the body and indicate the pair of them taken together, for instance, ' “eye” to ' “(pair of) eyes” and ' “arm” to ' “(pair of) arm”. These carry a different meaning to the regular plural forms, such as ' or ' “eyes” and ' “arms”, which do not indicate a matching pair.


Collective and singulative

A distinctive and unusual feature of
Brythonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. ...
is that of collective and singulative number. The base form of some Cornish nouns denotes a class or group, often natural objects, such as ' “pine trees”, ' “flies” and ' “fog”. A singulative is formed by adding the feminine ending ' to denote a single individual of the group, hence ' “a pine tree”, ' “a fly” and ' “a patch of fog”. Singulatives can themselves have plural forms in ', denoting a number of individuals of the group, so for instance, ' gives ' “(a number of) flies (individually)”.


Determiners


Articles

Cornish lacks an indefinite
article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
(although ' “one” is sometimes used to mean ”a certain...” e.g. ' “a certain dog”), but has a definite article, ', which precedes the noun, for example ' “the Cornishman” and ' “the Cornishwomen”. The article causes a soft mutation on feminine singular nouns, such as ' “Cornishwoman” to ' “the Cornishwoman”, and on masculine plural nouns denoting persons, as ' “Cornishmen” to ' “the Cornishmen”, although exceptions to the latter include ' “the fathers” and clear English borrowings such as ' “the doctors”. Also the masculine plural nouns ' ”stones” and ' ”horses” are exceptions, which are lenited to ' ”the stones” and ' ”the horses”, respectively. ' is shortened to ' after certain
function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...
s that end in a vowel, meaning ' “of”, ' “to” and ' “and” become ' “of the”, ' “to the” and ' “and the”, and in addition, ' “in” becomes identically pronounced ' “in the”.


Demonstrative determiners

The definite article and a noun followed by the
clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
s ' and ' to produce the
demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s “this/these” and “that/those” respectively, for example ' “this book” and ' “those books”.


Possessive determiners

The
possessive determiner Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do ...
s are as follows. Notice their similarity to the more reduced forms of the personal pronouns.


Pronouns


Personal pronouns

Personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s in Cornish can be arranged as follows. Independent personal pronouns are used as the subject of a nominal sentence, for example ' “I believe”, or can stand before the verb in a verbal sentence to draw attention to the subject implied by the verb, for example ' “''We'' cannot go”. Certain other constructions employ independent pronouns, such as those based on verbal nouns, like ' “(that) he came here”, and those that follow conjunctions, such as ' “as they are/were waiting”. Suffixed pronouns are attached to nouns in possessive constructions, to inflected verbs and to pronouns and are used to reinforce a pronoun previously expressed by a verbal or personal ending, for example ' “Where did she go?”. Reduced pronouns are used between a verbal particle and a verb, such as in ' “if I don't see you”.


Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
pronouns display two degrees of proximity as well as gender and number. These pronouns lose their final ' before ' “is” and ' “was”, for example ' “This is my (female) cousin”.


Adjectives

Cornish
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s usually come after the noun they modify although a few may come before or after, such as ' “bad” and ' “full”, and a small number always precede the noun, such as ' “many” and ' “old, long-standing”. There are simple and derived adjectives. The former comprise adjectives that are not derived of any other word, whereas the latter are formed by adding suffixes such as ' to the end of a noun (including verbal nouns). Adjectives are lenited when they are preceded by a feminine singular noun, or a masculine plural noun referring to persons, e.g. ' 'an old woman', ' 'small sons'.


Comparison

Adjectives are inflected with ' to give a comparative/superlative form. This suffix causes
provection Provection (from Latin: ''provectio'' "advancement") is a technical term of linguistics with two main senses. (1) The carrying over of the final consonant of a word to the beginning of the following word. Examples in English include Middle Englis ...
of the adjective stem, for example ' “wet” to ' and ' “stong” to '. A number of adjectives are irregular and have separate comparative and superlative forms. Used in place names.


Adverbs

Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
ials in Cornish may be a single word or a more complex phrases, for example ' “then” and ' “now”, literally “in this hour”. Many are formed from the combination of a preposition and a noun or pronoun, such as ' “downwards” from ' “on” and ' “bottom” and ' (or ') “within” from ' “from, at” and ' (or ') “house”. Adverbs can be formed from adjectives by means of the
particle In the Outline of physical science, physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small wikt:local, localized physical body, object which can be described by several physical property, physical or chemical property, chemical ...
' “in”, such as in the case of ' “strong” to ' “strongly” and ' “good” to ' “well”.


Verbs


Regular conjugation

Cornish
verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s are highly regular and are conjugated to show distinctions of
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, mood, tense and
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
in various combinations. Certain points should be observed about the above: :The final consonant of a verb stem is modified before subjunctive endings. Consonants are usually lengthened, shortening the previous vowel, and voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced and lengthened, for example, “open” to , “hang” to and “tell tales” to . :Certain verbs take slightly different endings in the indicative imperfect. Instead of , and , they take , and respectively, for example, “laugh” to “I/we were laughing”, “you ingularwere laughing”, “he/she/it was laughing”. :The third person singular indicative present/future and the second person imperative utilise the verbal stem with no ending. :In the third person singular and impersonal preterite, some verbs take the alternative ending , for example “grow” to and “call” to . :The impersonal form is equivalent to the use of the English pronoun ''
one 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
'' and can be used in a similar way to the English passive, for example, “One bought the food; The food was bought”. :The infinitive form is considered to be a
verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English grammar, English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the ...
in Cornish grammars, meaning an example like can function as both verbal “to buy” and nominal “(the act of) buying”. A number of different verbal noun endings exist. It should also be noted that vowel affection occurs in the stem of some verbs before certain endings, especially those with
close Close may refer to: Music * ''Close'' (Kim Wilde album), 1988 * ''Close'' (Marvin Sapp album), 2017 * ''Close'' (Sean Bonniwell album), 1969 * "Close" (Sub Focus song), 2014 * "Close" (Nick Jonas song), 2016 * "Close" (Rae Sremmurd song), 201 ...
front Front may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film * ''The Front'', 1976 film Music * The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and e ...
vowels, though not exclusively. Note: :The alternative indicative imperfect endings , and cause vowel affection. :Amongst the endingless forms, the present/future third person singular and the second person singular imperative, the former may include vowel affection while the latter does not, for example, “sound” to “he/she/it sounds” and “sound!” and “call” to “he/she/it calls” and “call!”. :The alternative third person singular and impersonal preterite ending causes vowel affection. :These endings also cause affection with some verbs. :Certain verbal noun endings cause vowel affection, again especially those with close front vowels.


Irregular conjugation

A handful of irregular verbs exist, the most common of which are detailed here. The most irregular verb of all is “be”, which is often used as an
auxiliary Auxiliary may refer to: * A backup site or system In language * Auxiliary language (disambiguation) * Auxiliary verb In military and law enforcement * Auxiliary police * Auxiliaries, civilians or quasi-military personnel who provide support of ...
and can be conjugated to show a number of additional distinctions not present in other verbs. Some peculiarities of to be noted as follows: :The present tense has separate short and long forms. The short forms are used when a
subject complement In grammar, a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb ( copula) and that complements the subject of the sentence by either (1) renaming it or (2) describing it. It completes the mea ...
is a noun or adjective whereas the long forms are used with adverbial and participle complements. In addition, the imperfect has a habitual form. : and are used in affirmitive declarative
independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...
clauses whereas , and are used elsewhere, such as negative,
interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
and
dependent A dependant is a person who relies on another as a primary source of income. A common-law spouse who is financially supported by their partner may also be included in this definition. In some jurisdictions, supporting a dependant may enabl ...
clauses. is used with definite subjects whereas is used with indefinite subjects. :The form is not found independently but rather in its mutated form as part of compound words, such as “known” and “owned”. is a combination of an reduced pronoun with dative meaning and the third person singular forms of , meaning literally “there is to e, or more idiomatically “ have”. A similar construction is present in
Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...
. The presence of the pronoun means there are separate masculine and feminine third person singular forms but no impersonal forms, verbal noun or participles. The irregular verb (or ) “know, can (know how to)” is based upon although does not utilise a habitual imperfect. Another extremely common irregular verb also used as an auxiliary is “do, make”. The verb “go, become” is irregular and has separate forms for the present perfect. Similarly, “come, arrive” is irregular and has present perfect forms. The irregular verbs “give” and “bring” (alternatively, and ) have similar conjugations. This table give the forms of from which the forms can be composed by adding an initial , for example “I give” to “I bring”. The only exceptions to this are that the second person singular imperatives of are , and and that, as usual, the of the present participle cause
provection Provection (from Latin: ''provectio'' "advancement") is a technical term of linguistics with two main senses. (1) The carrying over of the final consonant of a word to the beginning of the following word. Examples in English include Middle Englis ...
of the to to give .


Conjunctions

Certain conjunctions have an additional form used when followed by a vowel, such as ' “and” becoming and ' “than” becoming .


Prepositions

As in other Celtic languages, Cornish
prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
are simple or complex and may
inflect In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and def ...
to show person, number and gender. Historically, inflected prepositions derive from the
contraction Contraction may refer to: Linguistics * Contraction (grammar), a shortened word * Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons * Elision, omission of sounds ** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word * Synalepha, merged ...
between a preposition and a personal pronoun. Simple prepositions that inflect belong to one of three groups characterised by their use of the vowel , or . Third person prepositional stems are sometimes slightly different from those of the first and second persons and
affection Affection or fondness is a "disposition or state of mind or body" that is often associated with a feeling or type of love. It has given rise to a number of branches of philosophy and psychology concerning emotion, disease, influence, and sta ...
sometimes occurs in the third person singular feminine. “to” and “with” are irregular. Complex prepositions inflect by means of
interfix In phonology, an interfix or (more commonly) linking element is a part of a word that is placed between two morphemes (such as two roots or a root and a suffix) and lacks a semantic meaning. Examples Formation of compound words In German Ge ...
es, whereby the nominal second element is preceded by a pronominal form. This is similar to how can become in archaic English. Mutations may be triggered following the various pronominal forms as seen in the following table.


Numbers


Cardinal numbers

Similar to other
Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
, Cornish has an underlying
vigesimal vigesimal () or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). '' Vigesimal'' is derived from the Latin adjective '' vicesimus'', meaning 'twentieth'. Places In ...
counting system. “Two”, “three” and “four” and derivative numbers have separate masculine ''(m.)'' and feminine ''(f.)'' forms. The numbers 21 to 39 employ the connective ' “on the” to join the smaller number to the larger, for example ' “21”, ' “29” and ' “31”. From 41 onwards, the connecting word is ' “and”, as in ' “41”, ' “55” and ' “99”. Cardinal numbers used to form larger numbers include: Beyond 100, it is still possible to use multiples of , such as ' “120”. ' “100”, ' “1,000” and ' “1,000,000” are all masculine numbers, for example ' “3,000”.


Ordinal numbers

Ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
s and their abbreviations are shown below. The majority of numbers employ the ordinal suffix . Larger numbers also employ the suffix . In multi-word numbers, the initial smaller number joined with the connector takes the ordinal form, for example ' “21st” and ' “99th” (not ' or '). In multiword numbers that are not joined by connecting words, the final number takes the ordinal form, for example ' “40th”, ' “120th”, ' “3,000th”.


Word order and focus

The default Cornish word order is
verb–subject–object A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
, although like most Celtic languages this is somewhat fluid. Cornish has a system of fronting constituents, in which parts of a sentence can be moved to the front for focus, rather than stressing them in situ as English does. This system has influenced the
Anglo-Cornish The Cornish dialect (also known as Cornish English, Cornu-English, kw, Sowsnek Kernowek) is a dialect of English spoken in Cornwall by Cornish people. Dialectal English spoken in Cornwall is to some extent influenced by Cornish grammar, and o ...
dialect, heard in the distinctive questioning of dialect speakers such as “Goin’ in’ town are’ee?” and “’S bleddy ’tis”. In description sentences of the verb ''bos'' ‘to be’, the complement is typically fronted: Other existence sentences of ''bos'' front the verb: Since Cornish prefers to use a ‘there is’ existence form of ''bos'' with indefinite objects (when not fronted for emphasis, that is), an object being definite or indefinite can result in different parts being fronted: With other verbs, subject-fronted is the default unmarked word order. This still follows the default
verb–subject–object A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
order, since sentences of this kind were in origin relative clauses emphasising the subject: When the sentence's object is a pronoun, it appears before the verb and after the particle ''a'', although it can also appear after the verb for emphasis: ''My a’s gwel'' ‘I see her’, or ''My a’s gwel hi'' “I see ''her''”. When auxiliary verbs are used, a possessive pronoun is used with the verbal noun: ''My a wra hy gweles'' ‘I see her’ (literally “I do her seeing”), or when stressed, ''My a wra hy gweles hi'' “I see ''her''”. In both instances, colloquial spoken Cornish may drop all but the suffixed pronouns, to give ''My a wel hi'' and ''My a wra gweles hi'', although this is rarely written. In questions and negative sentences, an interrogative particle and negative particle are used, respectively. These are generally fronted in neutral situations: Subject pronouns can be placed before a negative particle for emphasis: ''My ny vynnav kewsel Sowsnek'' ’''I'' will not speak English’ or ’As for me, I will not speak English’ (said to be
Dolly Pentreath Dorothy Pentreath (16 May 1692 aptised– 26 December 1777) was a fishwife from Mousehole, Cornwall, England. She is the best-known of the last fluent speakers of the Cornish language. She is also often credited as the last known native spea ...
's last words).


Fronting for emphasis

Besides the “neutral” structures given above, elements of Cornish sentences can be fronted to give emphasis, or when responding to a question with requested information. Fronting involves moving the element to the beginning of the sentence. English typically achieves this by modifying tone or intonation. There are two particles involved in fronting. The particle ''a'' is actually a relative particle used when the subject or direct object of a sentence is fronted. If anything else is fronted, usually adverbials or information headed by prepositions, the particle used is ''y'' (''yth'' before a vowel).


Nominal syntax

Determiners A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
precede the noun they modify, while
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s generally follow it. A modifier that precedes its head noun often causes a
mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
, and adjectives following a
feminine Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered fe ...
noun are
lenited In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...
. Thus: *' (”a woman”) *' (”the woman”; ' is lenited because it is feminine) *' (”a wicked woman”; ' is lenited because ' “wicked” precedes it) *' (”a smart woman”; ' is lenited because it follows a feminine noun)
Genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
relationships are expressed by
apposition Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be ''in apposition'', and one of the elements is c ...
. The genitive in Cornish is formed by putting two
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s next to each other, the possessor coming second. So English “The cat's mother”, or “mother of the cat”, corresponds to Cornish – literally, “mother the cat”; “the project manager's telephone number” is – literally, “number telephone manager the project”. Only the last noun in a genitive sequence can take the
definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
.


References

*Williams, N. ''Desky Kernowek'' (Evertype, 2012) {{Cornish language Cornish language Celtic grammars