This paper looks at the cross-linguistically rare phenomenon of number suppletion in adjectives. I consider how such suppletion arises by looking at six known examples with a special focus on the Brittonic languages (Breton, Cornish and Welsh), which are discussed as an extended case study. Three generalisations are suggested on the basis of the typological study. First, adjectives denoting size (“small” and “big”) are at the centre of this phenomenon. Second, where the etymology of the adjectives is known, the plural member of the suppletive pair for “small” develops from a lexeme denoting something having been divided into or consisting of small parts. These lexemes can also be used with some singular nouns and in such cases they denote the component structure of the referent. Finally, adjectives with number suppletion tend to mark plural number consistently in environments in which plural marking is otherwise optional or rare.
Some languages use a special form of the noun, a “numerative”, after some or all numerals. In such languages, a distinct numerative is typically not available for all nouns, but rather only for a small subset, forming a morphological “minor category” (Corbett 2000). We examine how such a system emerges and disintegrates diachronically, looking in detail at Welsh, a language in which a distinct numerative emerged as the result of the phonological attrition of plural suffixes and analogical extension of new plural suffixes to all relevant syntactic environments except after numerals. Nouns with distinct numeratives tend to be animate and to denote units frequently counted, an association previously noted also for minor duals (Plank 1996). We suggest that this association arose in Welsh via differential analogical extension in two directions: animates resisted analogical extension of the pattern numeral + singular noun; and animates were most receptive to extension of the pattern numeral + numerative. We show that the loss of the numerative proceeded the same way in reverse: numeratives were first reanalyzed as special plurals, and this pattern, numeral + plural noun, resisted analogical spread of the dominant numeral + singular pattern most robustly with kinship terms and a unit of time, namely ‘year’. These developments show much commonality with other cases where the diachrony of the numerative is known, confirming the observation that numeratives typically emerge from the disintegration of a major category, such as plural or dual, and that they are diachronically unstable, liable ultimately to analogical elimination.
This paper investigates adjectival agreement in a group of Middle Welsh native prose texts and a sample of translations from around the end of the Middle Welsh period and the beginning of the Early Modern period. It presents a new methodology, employing tagged historical corpora allowing for consistent linguistic comparison. The adjectival agreement case study tests a hypothesis regarding position and function of adjectives in Middle Welsh, as well as specific semantic groups of adjectives, such as colours or related modifiers. The systematic analysis using an annotated corpus reveals that there are interesting differences between native and translated texts, as well as between individual texts. However, zooming in on our adjectival agreement case study, we conclude that these differences do not correspond to many of our hypotheses or assumptions about how certain texts group together. In particular, no clear split into native and translated texts emerged between the texts in our corpus. This paper thus shows interesting results for both (historical) linguists, especially those working on agreement, and scholars of medieval Celtic philology and translation texts.
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