by Dr Ken George
In the year 2000, I had the honour to give a lecture at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. The subject was, I fear, rather dry: Changes in the verbal stem in the subjunctive mood in Cornish . The material presented did, however, clarify how to spell parts of verbal paradigms.
In his English-Cornish dictionary, Nicholas Williams made the extraordinary statement about the numeral two, that "The Middle Cornish texts do not distinguish between a feminine form dyw and a masculine form dew." This is just not true .
A formal description of the structure of Cornish verbs is presented here .
The word heb 'without' causes occasional mutations .
The question of gender-neutral agent-suffixes in Cornish has recently received attention. Two different proposals for non-binary pronouns have been put forward: the first based on what Celtic neuter forms might have taken had they survived, and the second based on the third person plural verbal ending -ns .
The verbs 'to beg' and 'to believe' are of interest because they have four different verbal nouns.
The two similar Middle Cornish words for 'grace' gras and ras are examined in detail.