--- In cybalist@..., guto rhys <gutorhys@...> wrote:
>
> Could you clarify a little: 'And at the time Middle Welsh drops
unstressed vowels '
>
> Guto
>
from:
Karl Horst Schmidt: Insular Celtic: P and Q Celtic
...Among the phonological changes which mark the end of Late British,
four transformations are particularly important:
(a) the dropping of final syllables (as well of interior ones) caused
by the penultimate stress accent and resulting in the change of
inflection type (from synthetic to analytic), for example, in the
area of declension: *Maglo-cúnos > *MaGlgun > Maelgwn ...
(b) lenition of consonants in intervocalic position (voiceless
plosives becoming voiced; voiced plosives and m becoming voiced
fricatives); for example, Maelgwn;
(c) vowel affection, eg. umlaut: W mab "son" : pl. meibion
...
Torsdn