Cornish grammar is the grammar of the Cornish language ( or ), an insular Celtic language closely related to Breton and Welsh and, to a lesser extent, to Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic. It was the main medium of communication of the Cornish people for much of their history until the 17th century, when a language shift occurred in favour of English. A revival, however, started in 1904, with the publication of A Handbook of the Cornish Language, by Henry Jenner, and since then there has been a growing interest in the language.
Initial consonant mutation Initial mutation is a feature shared by all the modern Celtic languages, 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 person-related masculine plural noun.
+Consonant Mutation in CornishUnmutatedconsonantSoftmutationAspiratemutationHardmutationMixedmutationpbftdthkghbvpfddhttgdisappearskhgwkhwgwwkwhwmvfchj
Nouns
Gender Cornish nouns, like those of other Celtic languages, possess two grammatical genders, 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 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 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 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 (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 words 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 clitics and to produce the demonstratives “this/these” and “that/those” respectively, for example “this book” and “those books”.
Possessive determiners The possessive determiners are as follows. Notice their similarity to the more reduced forms of the personal pronouns.
singular plural 1st person 2nd person 3rd person masculine feminine non-binary (proposed)agans
Pronouns
Personal pronouns Personal pronouns in Cornish can be arranged as follows.
IndependentReducedSuffixedSingleDoubleReduced singular 1st person 2nd person 3rdperson masculine’n femininenon-binary (proposed)ins'ns??? plural 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person
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 pronouns display two degrees of proximity as well as gender and number.
Singular Plural masculine femininenon-binary (proposed) commonNear the speakerhemmansNear the listenerhennans
These pronouns lose their final before “is” and “was”, for example “This is my (female) cousin”.
Adjectives Cornish adjectives 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 of the adjective stem, for example “wet” to and “stong” to . A number of adjectives are irregular and have separate comparative and superlative forms. positivecomparativesuperlative, “small” “little” (quantity) “smaller, fewer, less” “smallest, fewest, least”, “good” “better” “best” “bad”, “worse” “worst” “low”, “lower”, “lowest” “much, great” “more, greater” “most, greatest” “near” “nearer” “nearest”
Adverbs Adverbials 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 , such as in the case of “strong” to “strongly” and “good” to “well”.
Verbs
Regular conjugation Cornish verbs are highly regular and are conjugated to show distinctions of person, number, mood, tense and aspect in various combinations.
+ example conjugation of "buy" 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Impersonal singular plural singular plural singular plural Indicative Present/ Future Preterite Imperfect Pluperfect Subjunctive Present/ Future Imperfect Imperative
Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle Certain points should be observed about the above:
It should also be noted that vowel affection occurs in the stem of some verbs before certain endings, especially those with close front vowels, though not exclusively.
+ affection with "touch" 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Impersonal singular plural singular plural singular plural Indicative Present/ Future Preterite Imperfect Pluperfect Subjunctive Present/ Future Imperfect Imperative Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle 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, alongside their English equivalents when translated; the most common of which are detailed here.
The most irregular verb of all is “be”, which is often used as an auxiliary and can be conjugated to show a number of additional distinctions not present in other verbs.
+ "be" 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Impersonal singular plural singular plural singular plural Indicative Present short form long form Future Preterite Imperfect short form long form habitual Pluperfect Subjunctive Present/ Future Imperfect Imperative Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle, , 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 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 clauses whereas , and are used elsewhere, such as negative, interrogative and dependent 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 a reduced pronoun with dative meaning and the third person singular forms of , meaning literally “there is to [me]”, or more idiomatically “[I] have”. A similar construction is present in Breton. The presence of the pronoun means there are separate masculine and feminine third person singular forms but no impersonal forms, verbal noun or participles.
1st person 2nd person 3rd person singular plural singular plural singular plural masculine feminine Indicative Present Future Preterite Imperfect simple habitual Pluperfect Subjunctive Present/ Future Imperfect Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle, ,
The irregular verb (or ) “know, can (know how to)” is based upon although does not utilise a habitual imperfect.
+ (or ) "know, can (know how to)" 1st person 2nd person 3rd person Impersonal singular plural singular plural singular plural Indicative Present Future Preterite Imperfect Pluperfect Subjunctive Present/ Future Imperfect Imperative Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle
Another extremely common irregular verb also used as an auxiliary is “do, make”.