Eto, Nigel Love > : ( Sut dywedir yn Gymraeg: ) ( > Why is John Major the Prime Minister of Britain? > > I think it ought > to be "Pam bod John Major yn Brif Weinidog ar Brydain?" (I had to > think not to soften it to "pam fod", perhaps because it ought to be > mutated, although I think not; rather I suspect that the mutation > is the berfenw-as-subject mutation of "Rhyfedd fod John Major yn > Brif Weinidog o gwbl.") > "Pam bod JM yn ..." asks "why John Major?". > Ho hum. It is usual to hear "pam mae JM yn BW ar Brydain?" but I > suspect that this was English ... [different meanings?] Nothing to do with English, I think, and surely they both mean the same thing; "pam bod" is what the haughtier of your grammarians refer to as a recent and 'corrupt' variant on the historically correct "pam (y) mae". But both these versions mean (or look as though they ought to mean) 'why is JM *a* PM of Britain?'. > ( More generally, I'm asking how you prepose a wh- > ) adverb to a copular construction whose complement is definite. > ( > ) I.e. 'the X is the Y' = 'yr Y yw'r X' > ( > ) Now, how do you say 'how/why/when/where is the X the Y'? > > Oh, so you really wanted a question from "John Major yw Prif Weinidog > Prydain"? Yes > That one would have to be "Pam mai JM yw PW P?" or "Pam taw > JM yw PW P?" I suppose. (I think "mai" in the North, "taw" in the > South, but I stand to be corrected.) "Pam mai...?" is roughly "why is > it that...?" > > I am struggling to make convincing examples of the others, although there > seems no reason not to ask "pa bryd mai", "pa le mai"... but "Sut mai ef > yw'r Prif Weinidog?" sounds OK, although it might be a borrowing of an > English construction. Cannot you always force the X to be indefinite, > (asking about "mae'r Y yn X-aidd")? That seems to be what is most natural. g "Pam mai JM yw PW P" was what I unthinkingly came up with in the first place, but then I wondered about it, because "mai" supposedly introduces a noun clause, and on the face of it we ain't got one of them here -- at any rate, not in the English. However, Mark Nodine suggests "pam mae hi mai JM yw PW P" -- which would allow you to think of "pam mai..." as arising via ellipsis of the main clause; i.e. "pam (mae hi) mai ..." Does that make sense? (Historically, "mae" and "mai" are the same thing; both originally meant 'that it is'. What it comes down to now, I think, is that "mae" is how you spell it when it appears by itself as the verb (e.g. mae'r gloch yn canu), and "mai" is how you spell it when there is a(nother) verb: dywedodd mai'r gloch sydd yn canu.) ************************ Nigel Love Linguistics Cape Town NLOVE@BEATTIE.UCT.AC.ZA ************************