Reconstruction talk:Proto-Celtic/brātīr

Brythonic

@Anglom Given the Breton and Cornish descendants, I'd consider reconstructing *brọdr for Brythonic. But the Welsh lack of -r jumps at me, it strikes me as an archaism. If final syllables are lost, then you'd expect the entire -īr to be lost at first instance, and the -r- could be restored by analogy with the plural. What do you think? —CodeCat 00:25, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

@CodeCat: The plural of the Welsh brawd is brodyr. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:32, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

It's generally assumed that -CVr survived apocope as -Cr, as in the borrowed suffix *-ọdr < Latin -ātor. The Welsh brawd is well-noted because *brawd(y)r is expected. Schrijver seems to think the best explanation is that (primitive) Welsh *brawdr and *trawstr (< L. transtrum) lost their -r by dissimilation before the development of the anaptyctic vowel. Anglom (talk) 01:08, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

What was the plural in Brythonic? Was it different from the singular? If they were the same, it would be odd if the dissimilation happened only in the singular. —CodeCat 01:22, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

There were probably actually two plurals, inherited *brọder seems to have been used specifically with numerals, at least in Welsh, while *brọdɨr < *brāterī (o-stem masc. plural) seems to have taken over as the proper plural. There is somewhat of a trend for consonant-stem plurals to be replaced with the o-stem masculine plural. Anglom (talk) 01:35, 11 October 2016 (UTC)