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7:16 am
September 1, 2009
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marhak
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And I would absolutely second that view, Dan.
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9:57 am
September 1, 2009
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Evertype
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Morvil said:
It is [Keith's] very strong belief that MC orthography was essentially and wholly borrowed from ME – your ideology, so to speak. It is my belief that, while borrowing certain features of contemporary English writing traditions, Cornish established its own literary standards.
Indeed. And Keith pronounces upon his beliefs as though it were indisputable fact—but the only value in doing so is that it is the only way he can "prove" that the phonology he supports is "correct".
The view that others take respects the Cornish literary standards for what they are, and, interestingly, lead us to an RMC and an RLC phonology which both accurately represents what we find in those texts and offers learners a feasible and achievable pronunciation.
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3:10 pm
September 1, 2009
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factotum
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Dan @ You may be right that /Ow/ > /u/ only happened before vowels. Has anyone attempted to set out clearly the MC > LC changes anywhere? Working through Nebbas Geriou recently I was struck be the way /wO/ to /u/ seemed to be pretty regular also. Obviously there's a lot of work to be done sorting all of this out. What different writers meant by the symbols they used. How Lhuyd's rendering of LC matched up with native writers', and with his transcription of other languages, and so on.
You appear to be saying that clowas and bownans in later MC were not really /klOwaz/ and /bOwans/, i.e. it's ow Jim, but not as we know it. So by your reasoning the written ow in these words cryptically conceals some different sound from 'normal' ow. Like perhaps, say clywaz, bywnans ? 
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3:47 pm
September 1, 2009
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factotum
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Middle Cornish, imo, did indeed establish a literary tradition, at least for verse, in sound. But not for spelling, where it mostly muddled through with ME conventions. There are a few traces of an earlier system, like /D/ written d in OM, and possibly the use of oy for /U/ < /oj/ in some mss. Otoh, the ME use of ei, ie for /e:/ leading to the Cornish use of ey, ye for /I/, may have reinforced this practice. The situation you describe would be true for Middle Welsh, a few ME conventions were taken up but the established native system more or less continued, but not really for Cornish.
As English changed so did the spelling of Cornish, pretty well in step, maybe with a slight lag. In Tudor Cornish we start to see, mute final e's, a tendency to double final l, the spelling of dhymm as y{m} parallel to the English use of y{e}, y{en}, y{ere} for the, then, there etc. ( {} = superscript ). We see e beginning to be used to spell Cornish /i, y/ in addition to /I/ when half-long, reflecting the raising of the value of English e = /E: – e:/ in this position to take in the /e: – i:/ range. The English vowel shift moved the goalposts.
Williams theory was that Cornish and Breton took part in the same early weakening that led to VA in Welsh. The conventional view is that this only applied in C & B to a few proclitics and prefixes. Williams theory does not predict any effect on Cornish /i, y/ which is observed in later mss. It does not predict that VA would be more prominent in later rather than earlier mss, if anything the opposite. It would predict some alternation in the case of back vowels, where not obscured by analogy or i-affection. The critical cases are rather few, but those we identified do not support the theory. These cases should also show VA in Breton, they don't. Where the earlier weakening did affect C & B, the result was e not o, so we should still expect *bedhar for bodhar etc.
Basically, the original idea was clever, and looked plausible. But when examined in detail it didn't work. Now instead of accepting that it didn't work, you're elaborating the original idea to try to cover its deficiencies, which is like adding epicycle to epicycle to try to make the Ptolomaic universe match the data. This is valid when a theory is sort-of in the right ball-park but needs a little tweaking to get it right. But in this case, I think, your not even in the same county. It may be considered brave to defend the indefensible, but it's also completely futile.
Especially when there's a much simpler solution.
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4:02 pm
September 1, 2009
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factotum
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| C24 Regular | posts 362 |
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Evertype said:
The view that others take respects the Cornish literary standards for what they are, and, interestingly, lead us to an RMC and an RLC phonology which both accurately represents what we find in those texts and offers learners a feasible and achievable pronunciation.
It offers the results of a naive and too literal reading of the texts, taking the written signs at close to face value, even when the consequences are linguistically improbable if not outright impossible. The result is exactly the "made-up language" we all wish to avoid.
Williams' mission seems to have been to reinstate something close to UC phonology, by arguing that historical Middle Cornish really did sound rather like the well-meaning but often mistaken mispronunciations of Nance and his supporters, and hence of much of the lingering tradition of mispronunciation we are still grappling with. For feasible and achievable read artificial and complacent.
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4:03 pm
September 1, 2009
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Pokorny
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| C24 Regular | posts 458 |
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Otoh, the ME use of ei, ie for /e:/ leading to the Cornish use of ey, ye for /I/, may have reinforced this practice.
How can we know that <ey~ye> did not represent long /e/ (or /e:/ in a vowel-length based model) – as opposed to long /ɛ/ (or /ɛ:/), which it possibly only merged with at a later date – in post-Ordinalia Middle Cornish as it did in Middle English? After all we know from Late Cornish that the vowel in question did get lowered.
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http://www.kernewegva.com
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5:03 pm
September 1, 2009
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factotum
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I think the coincidence with the ME usage is at least worthy of consideration. I only came across it recently and I've never seen any mention in the literature.
Was this vowel (/I/) always lowered in LC? The impression I get is that when long in stressed monosyllables it may have merged with /i/. This also seems to be the case for MC /y/. But in most other environments, including half-long, they appear to go to /e/, egance < ugens etc.
Dunno, definitely deserves careful examination.
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5:31 pm
September 1, 2009
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Pokorny
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| C24 Regular | posts 458 |
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AFAIK the correspondence you mention (KK /I/ ~ LC /i:/) applies in stressed, open syllables where Lhuyd's transcription tends towards <î>. In closed syllables, KK /I/ normally corresponds to LC /e/.
mî (KK my)
tî ~ tshî (KK ty)
bîan (KK byghan)
but
bêz (KK bys)
dêdh (KK dydh)
Interestingly, it is in the same environment (i.e. open stressed syllables) that we see KK /i/ correspond to LC /əɪ/:
huei (KK hwi)
tshei (KK chi)
kreia (KK kria)
Both developments, if taken at face value (i.e. [e:] > [i:]; [i:] > [əɪ]), are somewhat reminiscent of the English Great Vowel Shift – with the caveat that in English, long vowels in closed syllables were equally affected.
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http://www.kernewegva.com
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10:44 pm
September 1, 2009
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factotum
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| C24 Regular | posts 362 |
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Does the internal hiatus environment correspond to absolute final?
It looks as though it does for /I/ but what about /i/?
In JCH we have kreiez, (kri + yz), beside tîak (tiek) and skîans (skiens). Either the first is analogical (or mistaken?) or the last two words ought to be KK tyek, skyens?
I appear to have assumed that /y/ would have unrounded to /I/ rather than /i/, probably a false analogy with Welsh. Certainly in stressed closed monosyllables MC /y/ gives LC [i:] apparently, Lhuyd's î, others generally ee. I was also assuming that 'to thee' was dhys rather than dhis as in current KK. Based on the fact that the former seems to fit better with the MC rhymes, as well as its etymology. It looks like this may have been a word which for different reasons had /I/ > /i/ independently in both W and B. However I'm now thinking that dhis would have to be correct for LC at least given Lhuyd's consistent transcription as dhîz. If so that only seems to leave (in JCH) his vêdh (20, 24), which I had marked as an exception, but which would now represent the regular development in closed syllables of /I/ > /e/.
So for long vowels in stressed monosyllables we have in open syllables (absolute auslaut) :
/i/ > [@j] ; /I/ > [i:] ; /E/ > [e:].
(Earlier final /y/ had already developed an off-glide and merged with /yw/ in this position, and unrounded to either [I.w] or [i.w] to give LC [e.w] or [i.w]. Rowe's Deew might suggest [i.w] but Lhuyd has dhå dheu robo gor zêhez (JCH 44), taken to be dhe Dhuw re bo gordhyans 'may God be praised!' So I'm still uncertain about this.)
When long in stressed closed syllables :
/i, y/ > [i:] ; /I, E/ > [e:].
In both cases stressed long /a, O/ seem to have remained, /9/ had already become /E/, and /U, u/ may have merged as [u:], but both these last are rather uncommon (and there were no absolute final /U/).
Overall it looks as if the MC 9-vowel system of /i y u, I 9 U, E a O/ simplified to a LC 5-vowel system of /i e a o u/ with the loss of front rounded and high-mid vowels. But then I wonder if this might just be the result of writers having only the standard five written vowels to play with 
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7:15 am
September 2, 2009
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Morvil
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| C24 Regular | posts 96 |
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factotum said:
"Middle Cornish, imo, did indeed establish a literary tradition, at least for verse, in sound. But not for spelling, where it mostly muddled through with ME conventions. There are a few traces of an earlier system, like /D/ written d in OM, and possibly the use of oy for /U/ < /oj/ in some mss. Otoh, the ME use of ei, ie for /e:/ leading to the Cornish use of ey, ye for /I/, may have reinforced this practice. The situation you describe would be true for Middle Welsh, a few ME conventions were taken up but the established native system more or less continued, but not really for Cornish."
Can you supply us with examples of ME <ei>, <ie> etc. for /e:/. I can't seem to think of any…
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Na wrewgh eva re, bos eva rag 'gas sehes, ha hedna, moy po le, 'vedn gwitha corf en 'ehes!
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