[Spellyans] 'Valley' in Cornish

[Jon Mills]

I think that you are being a bit hard on Nicholas, Eddie. It is very easy
to overlook an attestation and it is very difficult to be sure that you
have found all attestations of a given lexical item. There is no shame in
being corrected for an oversight. I, myself, have been corrected several
times on this list, for which I am grateful. Yes I think that we would be
safe "in extrapolating the singular noun from this solitary plural
citation". It is only a question of removing the plural ending, -OW.
Furthermore NANS is attested in place names. It is difficult to see how
the singular of "nanssow" could be anything other than 'nans'.Jon

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Eddie Climo"
  To: "Standard Cornish discussion list"
  Subject: Re: [Spellyans] 'Valley' in Cornish
  Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:05:20 +0100

  On 28 Jul 2008, at 12:54, nicholas williams wrote:

    It is not astonishing therefore that the plural nanssow occurs in
    PA.


  Well, it astonished me that, after all the denials, 'nans' IS in fact
  attested in the texts as a noun -- at least, in the plural. Would we
  be safe, I wonder, in extrapolating the singular noun from this
  solitary plural citation?

    By the sixteenth century, when the original version of CW was
    written, nans had probably been replaced in speech by valy.


  Is there any evidence for this statistical assertion? If so, would
  you care to give a numerical approximation to the probability?
  Eddie

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_____________________________________
Dr. Jon Mills,
School of European Culture and Languages,
University of Kent

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