Nouns The
morphological structure of
nouns and
adjectives demonstrates no arresting alterations from the parent language. Proto-Celtic is believed to have had nouns in three
genders, three
numbers and five to eight cases. The genders were masculine, feminine and neuter; the numbers were singular, plural and dual. The number of cases is a subject of contention: while Old Irish may have only five, the evidence from Continental Celtic is considered rather unambiguous despite appeals to archaic retentions or
morphological leveling. These cases were
nominative,
vocative,
accusative,
dative,
genitive,
ablative,
locative and
instrumental. Nouns fall into nine or so declensions, depending on stem. There are *
o-stems, *
ā-stems, *
i-stems, *
u-stems, dental stems, velar stems, nasal stems, *
r-stems and *
s-stems.
*o-stem nouns 'son' (masculine) (
Old Irish ~
Welsh,
Cornish and
Breton ) However, Celtiberian shows -o- stem genitives ending in
-o rather than
-ī:
aualo "[son] of Avalos". Also note that the genitive singular does not match Proto-Indo-European's
-osyo, which would have yielded
-osjo. •
dūnom 'stronghold' (neuter) As in the masculine paradigm, the genitive singular does not match Proto-Indo-European's
-osyo, which would have yielded
-osjo.
*ā-stem nouns E.g. 'hand' (feminine) (
Old Irish ;
Welsh },
Cornish ,
Old Breton )
*i-stems E.g. 'sight, view, eye' (feminine) (
Brittonic sulis ~
Old Irish ) E.g. 'body of water, sea' (neuter) (
Gaulish Mori- ~
Old Irish ~
Welsh )
*u-stem nouns E.g. 'world, existence' (masculine) (
Gaulish Bitu- ~
Old Irish ~
Welsh ~
Breton ) E.g. "
rotisserie spit" (neuter)
Velar and dental stems Before the
*-s of the nominative singular, a velar consonant was
fricated to
*-x : "king" > . Likewise, final
*-d devoiced to
*-t-: "druid" > . E.g. "king" (masculine) E.g. "druid" (masculine) E.g. "friend" (masculine)
Nasal stems Generally, nasal stems end in *-
on-; this becomes *-
ū in the nominative singular: *
abon- "river" > *
abū. E.g. "river" (feminine) E.g. "name" (neuter)
*s-stem nouns Generally,-stems contain an
*-es-, which becomes
*-os in the nominative singular: 'house' > . E.g. "house" (neuter)
*r-stem nouns •
r-stems are rare and principally confined to names of relatives. Typically they end in *-
ter-, which becomes *-
tīr in the nominative and *-
tr- in all other cases aside from the accusative: *
ɸater- 'father' > *
ɸatīr, *
ɸatros. E.g. *
ɸatīr 'father' (masculine) E.g. *
mātīr 'mother' (feminine)
Pronouns The following personal pronouns in Celtic can be reconstructed as follows: The following third-person pronouns in Proto-Celtic may also be reconstructed.
Adjectives Adjectives in Proto-Celtic had positive, comparative, superlative and equative
degrees of comparison.
Superlative degree The superlative was formed by simply attaching to the adjective stem. In some adjectives where the stem ends in
*s, the suffix is truncated to by
haplology. Verbs were formed by adding
suffixes to a
verbal
stem. The stem might be
thematic or
athematic, an
open or a
closed syllable.
Primary endings The primary endings in Proto-Celtic were as follows. They were used to form the present, future, and subjunctive conjugations. The
seṭ nasal-infix presents were further subdivided into subcategories based on the root-final laryngeal. Traditionally two subclasses have long been accepted, the subclass (cited with a
-ni- suffix) and (cited with a
-na- suffix). nasal-infixed verbs were often leveled to act like verbs, being also cited with a
-na- suffix; the only original difference between the two would have been the 3rd-person plural ending in
*-nonti instead of
*-nanti. The nasal-infix
seṭ verbs in Proto-Celtic underwent multiple
levelings. First, the suffixal vowel in the plural forms was harmonized so that they would all be the short counterpart to the vowel in the singular forms. Then all the long vowels in the singular were shortened to make the suffix vowel identical in quality and length across all person-number combinations.
t-preterite The Old Irish t-preterite was traditionally assumed to be a divergent evolution from the s-preterite, but that derivation was challenged by
Jay Jasanoff, who alleges that they were instead imperfects of
Narten presents. Either derivation requires Narten ablaut anyway, leading to a stem vowel
i in the singular and
e in the plural. The stem vowel in the t-preterite was leveled to
*e if the next consonant was either velar or
*m, and
*i in front of
*r or
*l.
Suffixless preterites A number of suffixless preterite formations featured
reduplication. The nature of the reduplication depends on the structure of the root. There were also two, possibly three verbs that did not use
-(a)se-, instead straight-out taking thematised primary endings. They are: "to be, exist" (subjunctive ), "to hear" (subjunctive ), and possibly “to approach, drive” (subjunctive ). Primary subjunctive formations in Proto-Celtic generally use the
e-grade of the verb root, even if the present stem uses the zero-grade.
Imperative formation Imperative endings in Proto-Celtic were as follows:
Second-person singular imperative The second-person singular imperative was generally endingless in the active; no ending was generally added to athematic verbs. On thematic
-e/o- verbs, the imperative ended in thematic vowel
*-e. However, there is also another second-person singular active imperative ending,
-si, which was attached to the verb root athematically even with thematic strong verbs. The thematic deponent second-person singular imperative ending was
*-eso. The
-the in Old Irish is secondary. may be summarised in tabular format.
Copula The copula
*esti was irregular. It had both athematic and thematic conjugations in the present tense. Schrijver supposes that its athematic present was used clause-initially and the thematic conjugation was used when that was not the case. == Numerals ==