Taking a new look at Cornish grammar 2 (subjects)

Subjects

Let’s look at what you can use as a subject.

The subject of a sentence can be the name of a person (or place), etc.

(e.g. Jory George, Mester Gov Mr. Smith, Truru Truro),

a noun

(e.g. den a man, flogh[1] a child),

or any of a whole variety of pronouns that can be used in their place

(e.g. ev he/it).

In a simple sentence there is just one of them,

in a compound sentence there is more than one

(e.g. Jory ha Jowannet  George and Janet, den ha benyn a man and a woman, ev ha me he and I).

Looking at nouns we find that they can be

singular nouns (e.g. den a man, flogh a child)

plural nouns (e.g. tüs men, flehes children)

collective or group nouns  (e.g. bagas a group, a gang, gwedh trees)

and verbal nouns[2] (e.g. debry eating, eva drinking)

In Cornish (as in French) nouns can be masculine

e.g. kei (m) a dog , flogh (m) a child, bord (m) a table

or feminine

e.g. cath (f) a cat , scavel (f) a stool

(even if they have no gender, an unknown gender or have a different gender in real life)

and they may have a definite article or indefinite article[3]

e.g.  kei (m) a dog, an kei the dog

flogh (m) a child, an flogh the child

bord (m) a table, an bord the table

cath (f) a cat, an gath[4] the cat

scavel (f) a stool, an scavel  the stool

We will look at subject pronouns (or pronoun phrases) in turn. (There are also some versions of pronouns that are only used in the preterite, e.g. reflexive pronouns, object pronouns. We will look at these later.)

They can be

1.   personal pronouns (e.g. ev he, nei we)

2.   indefinite pronouns (e.g. nebonan someone, somebody)

3.   demonstrative pronouns (e.g. hedna that , an re ma these)

4.   possessive pronouns (e.g. peth vy mine)

5.   interrogative pronouns (e.g. piw who)

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[1] An example of a word with varied spelling and pronunciation: In Late Cornish you may see this as <floh> as the <g> became silent.

[2]  In English verbs used as nouns are called gerunds.

[3]  notice that there is not a separate word for  the indefinite article – it is implied in the noun

[4] the change of initial letter is mutation – a feature of Celtic languages 

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