Literary Welsh morphology


The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs inflect for person, tense and mood with affirmative, interrogative and negative conjugations of some verbs. There are few case inflections in Literary Welsh, being confined to certain pronouns.
Modern Welsh can be written in two varieties – Colloquial Welsh or Literary Welsh. The grammar described on this page is for Literary Welsh.

Initial consonant mutation

Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages. The first consonant of a word in Welsh may change depending on grammatical context, when preceded by certain words, e.g. i, yn, and a or when the normal word order of a sentence is changed, e.g. Y mae tŷ gennyf, Y mae gennyf dŷ "I have a house".
Welsh has three mutations: the soft mutation, the nasal mutation, and the aspirate mutation. These are also represented in writing, as shown in the table below.
A blank cell indicates no change.
For example, the word for "stone" is carreg, but "the stone" is y garreg, "my stone" is fy ngharreg and "her stone" is ei charreg.
*The soft mutation for g is the simple deletion of the initial sound. For example, gardd "garden" becomes yr ardd "the garden". But this can behave as a consonant under certain circumstances, e.g. "gellir" becomes "ni ellir" not "*nid ellir".

Soft mutation

The soft mutation is by far the most common mutation in Welsh. When words undergo soft mutation, the general pattern is that voiceless plosives become voiced plosives, and voiced plosives become fricatives or disappear; sonorants the lateral fricative becomes a plain lateral . The full list is shown in the above table.
Common situations where the full soft mutation occurs are as follows – this list is by no means exhaustive:
  • adjectives qualifying feminine singular nouns
  • words immediately following the prepositions am "for, about", ar "on", at "to", tan/dan "under", tros/dros "over", trwy/drwy "through", heb "without", hyd "until", gan "by", wrth "at", i "to, for", o "of, from"
  • nouns used with the number two
  • nouns following adjectives
  • nouns after the possessives dy, informal singular "your", and ei when it means "his"
  • an object of an inflected verb
  • the second element in many compound words
  • when an adverbial phrase comes between two elements, the second element is mutated
  • verbs after the interrogative particle a
In some cases a limited soft mutation takes place. This differs from the full soft mutation in that words beginning with rh and ll do not mutate.
Situations where the limited soft mutation occurs are as follows.
  • feminine singular nouns with the definite article or the number one
  • nouns or adjectives used predicatively or adverbially after yn
  • adjectives following cyn or mor, both meaning "so"
  • after the prefixes can- and dar-
The occurrence of the soft mutation often obscures the origin of placenames to non-Welsh-speaking visitors. For example, Llanfair is the church of Mair, and Pontardawe is the bridge on the Tawe.

Nasal mutation

The nasal mutation normally occurs:
  • after fy "my" e.g. gwely "a bed", fy ngwely "my bed"
  • after the locative preposition yn "in" e.g. Tywyn "Tywyn", yn Nhywyn "in Tywyn"
  • after the negating prefix an-, e.g. teg "fair", annheg "unfair".

    Grammatical considerations

Yn meaning "in" must be distinguished from other uses of yn which do not cause nasal mutation. For example:
  • In the sentence Mae plastig yn nhrwyn Siaco, trwyn has undergone nasal mutation.
  • In the sentence Mae trwyn Siaco yn blastig, plastig has undergone soft, not nasal, mutation.
  • In the sentence Mae trwyn Siaco yn cynnwys plastig, cynnwys is not mutated.
The ’m form often used instead of fy after vowels does not cause nasal mutation. For example:
  • Pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad.

    Aspirate mutation

The aspirate mutation turns the voiceless plosives into fricatives. In writing, the aspirate mutation is shown by an addition of an h in the spelling, although strictly speaking the resultant forms are single phonemes.
The aspirate mutation occurs:
  • after the possessive ei when it means "her"
  • after a "and"
  • after â "with"
  • for masculine nouns after the number three
  • after the number six

    Mixed mutation

A mixed mutation occurs after the particles ni, na and oni which negate verbs. Initial consonants which change under the aspirate mutation do so; other consonants change as in the soft mutation. For example, clywais "I heard" is negated as ni chlywais "I did not hear", na chlywais "that I did not hear" and oni chlywais? "did I not hear?", whereas dywedais "I said" is negated as ni ddywedais, na ddywedais and oni ddywedais?.

The article

Welsh has no indefinite article. The definite article, which precedes the words it modifies and whose usage differs little from that of English, has the forms y, yr, and ’r. The rules governing their usage are:
  1. When the previous word ends in a vowel, regardless of the quality of the word following, ’r is used, e.g. mae'r gath tu allan. This rule takes precedence over the other two below.
  2. When the word begins with a vowel, yr is used, e.g. yr arth "the bear".
  3. In all other places, y is used, e.g. y bachgen.
The letter w represents both a consonant Voiced labio-velar approximant| and vowel Close back rounded vowel| and a preceding definite article will reflect this by following the rules above, e.g. y wal "the wall" but yr wy or "the egg". However, pre-vocalic yr is used before both the consonantal and vocalic values represented by i, e.g. yr iâr "the hen" and yr ing "the anguish". It is also always used before the consonant h, e.g. yr haf "the summer".
The first rule may be applied with greater or less frequency in various literary contexts. For example, poetry might use ’r more often to help with metre, e.g. ’R un nerth sydd yn fy Nuw "The same power is in my God" from a hymn by William Williams Pantycelyn. On the other hand, sometimes its use is more restricted in very formal contexts, e.g. Wele, dyma y rhai annuwiol "Behold, these are the ungodly" in Psalm 73.12.
The article triggers the soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. tywysoges " princess" but y dywysoges "the princess".

Nouns

Like most Indo-European languages, all nouns belong to a certain grammatical gender; in this case, masculine or feminine. A noun's gender conforms to its referent's natural gender when it has one, e.g. mam "mother" is feminine. There are also semantic, morphological and phonological clues to help determine a noun's gender, e.g. llaeth "milk" is masculine as are all liquids, priodas "wedding" is feminine because it ends in the suffix -as, and theatr "theatre" is feminine because the stressed vowel is an e. Many everyday nouns, however, possess no such clues.
Sometimes a noun's gender may vary depending on meaning, for example gwaith when masculine means "work", but when feminine, it means "occasion, time". The words for languages behave like feminine nouns after the article, e.g. y Gymraeg "the Welsh language", but as masculine nouns when qualified, e.g. Cymraeg da "good Welsh". The gender of some nouns depends on a user's dialect, and although in the literary language there is some standardization, some genders remain unstable, e.g. tudalen "page".
Welsh has two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English, although unlike English, Welsh noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways. Some nouns form the plural with an ending, e.g. tad and tadau. Others form the plural through vowel change, e.g. bachgen and bechgyn. Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, e.g. chwaer and chwiorydd.
Several nouns have two plural forms, e.g. the plural of stori "story" is either storïau or straeon. This can help distinguish meaning in some cases, e.g. whereas llwyth means both "tribe" and "load", llwythau means "tribes" and llwythi means "loads".
The other system of number is the collective/unit system. The nouns in this system form the singular by adding the suffix -yn or -en to the plural. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, plant "children" and plentyn "a child", or coed "forest" and coeden "a tree". In dictionaries, the plural is often given first.

Adjectives

Adjectives normally follow the noun they qualify, e.g. mab ieuanc " young son", while a small number precede it, usually causing soft mutation, e.g. hen fab " old son". The position of an adjective may even determine its meaning, e.g. mab unig " lonely son" as opposed to unig fab " only son". In poetry, however, and to a lesser extent in prose, most adjectives may occur before the noun they modify, but this is a literary device. It is also seen in some place names, such as Harlech and Glaslyn.
When modifying a noun belonging to the feminine, adjectives undergo soft mutation, for example, bach "small" and
following the masculine noun bwrdd and the feminine noun bord, both meaning "table":
For the most part, adjectives are uninflected, though there are a few with distinct masculine/feminine and/or singular/plural forms. A feminine adjective is formed from a masculine by means of vowel change, usually "w" to "o" or "y" to "e". A plural adjective may employ vowel change, take a plural ending or both.
Adjective comparison in Welsh is fairly similar to the English system except that there is an additional degree, the equative. Native adjectives with one or two syllables usually receive the endings -ed "as/so", -ach "-er" and -af "-est". The stem of the adjective may also be modified when inflected, including by provection, where final or near-final b, d, g become p, t, c respectively.
Generally, adjectives with two or more syllables use a different system, whereby the adjective is preceded by the words mor "as/so", mwy "more" and mwyaf "most".
The literary language tends to prefer the use inflected adjectives where possible.
There are also a number of irregular adjectives.
These are the possessive adjectives:
The possessive adjectives precede the noun they qualify, which is sometimes followed by the corresponding form of the personal pronoun, especially to emphasize the possessor, e.g. fy mara i "my bread", dy fara di "your bread", ei fara ef "his bread" etc.
Ein, eu and feminine ei add an h a following word beginning with a vowel, e.g. enw "name", ei henw "her name".
The demonstrative adjectives are inflected for gender and number:
These follow the noun they qualify, which also takes the article. For example, the masculine word llyfr "book" becomes y llyfr hwn "this book", y llyfr hwnnw "that book", y llyfrau hyn "these books" and y llyfrau hynny "those books".

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

The Welsh personal pronouns are:
The Welsh masculine-feminine gender distinction is reflected in the pronouns. There is, consequently, no word corresponding to English "it", and the choice of e or hi depends on the grammatical gender of the antecedent.
The English dummy or expletive "it" construction in phrases like "it's raining" or "it was cold last night" also exists in Welsh and other Indo-European languages like French, German, and Dutch, but not in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or the Slavic languages. Unlike other masculine-feminine languages, which often default to the masculine pronoun in the construction, Welsh uses the feminine singular hi, thus producing sentences like:

vs.

Chi, in addition to serving as the second-person plural pronoun, is also used as a singular in formal situations. Conversely, ti can be said to be limited to the informal singular, such as when speaking with a family member, a friend, or a child. This usage corresponds closely to the practice in other European languages. The third colloquial form, chdi, is not found in literary Welsh.

Reflexive pronouns

The reflexive pronouns are formed with the possessive adjective followed by hunan "self".
There is no gender distinction in the third person singular.

Reduplicated pronouns

Literary Welsh has reduplicated pronouns that are used for emphasis, usually as the subject of a focussed sentence. For example:
Tydi a'n creodd ni.
" Thou that createdst us."
Oni ddewisais i chwychwi?
"Did I not choose you?"

Conjunctive pronouns

Welsh has special conjunctive forms of the personal pronouns. They are perhaps more descriptively termed 'connective or distinctive pronouns' since they are used to indicate a connection between or distinction from another nominal element. Full contextual information is necessary to interpret their function in any given sentence.
Less formal variants are given in brackets. Mutation may also, naturally, affect the forms of these pronouns
The emphatic pronouns can be used with possessive adjectives in the same way as the simple pronouns are used.

Demonstrative pronouns

In addition to having masculine and feminine forms of this and that, Welsh also has separate set of this and that for intangible, figurative, or general ideas.
In certain expressions, hyn may represent "now" and hynny may represent "then".

Verbs

In literary Welsh, far less use is made of auxiliary verbs than in its colloquial counterpart. Instead conjugated forms of verbs are common. Most distinctively, the non-past tense is used for the present as well as the future.
The preterite, non-past, and imperfect tenses have forms that are somewhat similar to colloquial Welsh, demonstrated here with talu 'pay'. There is a regular affection of the a to e before the endings -ais, -aist, -i, -ir and -id.
To these, the literary language adds pluperfect, subjunctive, and imperative forms with affection before -wyf and -wch.

Irregular verbs

and compounds

Bod "to be" is highly irregular. Compared with the inflected tenses above, it has separate present and future tenses, separate present and imperfect subjunctive tenses, separate imperfect and conditional tenses, and uses the pluperfect as a consuetudinal imperfect tense. The third person of the present tense has separate existential and descriptive forms, except in the situations where the positive or relative forms are used in their place.
In less formal styles, the affirmative/indirect relative, interrogative/direct relative, and negative particles have a particularly strong tendency to become infixed on the front of forms of bod, for instance roedd and dyw for yr oedd and nid yw. Although the literary language tends toward keeping the particles in full, affirmative y is optional before mae.
Reduplicating the negation of the verb with ddim is generally avoided.
Certain other verbs with bod in the verb-noun are also to some extent irregular. By far the most irregular are gwybod and adnabod ; but there also exists a group of verbs that alternate -bu- and -bydd- stems, namely canfod, cydnabod, cyfarfod, darfod, darganfod, gorfod, and hanfod.
Therefore, presented below are gwybod and adnabod in the tenses where they do not simply add gwy- or adna- to forms of bod. That they both, like bod, separate the present and future tenses. A regular feature of this mood is the devoicing of b to p before the subjunctive endings,.

and

The four verbs mynd "to go", gwneud "to do", cael "to get", and dod "to come" are all irregular. These share many similarities, but there are also far more points of difference in their literary forms than in their spoken ones. In particular, cael is significantly different from the others in the preterite and non-past tenses and is unusual for having no imperative mood.

Prepositions

In Welsh, prepositions frequently change their form when followed by a pronoun. These are known as inflected prepositions. They fall into three main conjugations.
Firstly those in -a- :
Secondly those in -o-, tros/dros, trwy/drwy, o. All apart from o add a linking element in the third person :
Thirdly, those in -y-. Gan includes both vowel changes and a linking element, while wrth has neither:
Finally, the preposition i is highly irregular:
All inflected prepositions may optionally be followed by the appropriate personal pronouns, apart from i, where this is only possible in the third person, thanks to its proper endings in the other persons sounding the same as the pronouns. In slightly less formal Welsh, the endings are split off the first and second persons of i to be interpreted as pronouns instead, although this creates the anomalous pronoun mi.
The majority of prepositions trigger the soft mutation. The exceptions are â, gyda, and tua, which cause the aspirate mutation; yn, which causes the nasal mutation; and cyn, ger, mewn, rhag, and rhwng, which do not cause any mutation.