as cerir fi, cerir di, cerir ef, etc., though Dr. Davies confesses that “omnia verba passiua ad naturam impersonalium quam proxime accedunt” D. 101. It has been argued that a substantival object has a soft initial, as gwêl ẟyn ‘he sees a man’; but this is a late use; the soft is rarely found after the 3rd sg. in Early Mn. poets. It arose to distinguish the subject from the obj., but in the case of the impersonal there is no ambiguity. Intransitive verbs including the verb ‘to be’ are frequently used in the impersonal, and the forms are not felt to be in any way different from transitive impersonals except that a trans. verb requires an object: cychwynnir am ddau ‘a start will be made at two’.
The impersonal with its object is generally most conveniently translated into English by a passive with its subject, thus cerir fi ‘I am loved’; but this should not blind us to the construction in Welsh.
iv. (1) Each verb has also a verbal noun and most have verbal adjectives.
(2) The verbal noun is not strictly an infinitive; it governs the genitive, not the accusative, case. It may be used, like an abstract noun, with the article or an adj., as the subject or obj. of a verb or the obj. of a preposition; but it is sufficiently distinct from an ordinary abstract noun by reason of certain constructions in which it cannot be replaced by the latter. See e.g. § 204 ii.
(3) Verbal adjectives are used like ordinary adjectives, and have not developed the peculiar uses of participles.
The Regular Verb.
§ 172. i. The regular verb caraf ‘I love’ is conjugated as follows; Ml. forms are given in spaced type:
Indicative Mood.
Present Tense.
| Ml. W. | Mn. W. | ||||||
| sg. | pl. | sg. | pl. | ||||
| 1. | karaf | 1. | karwn | 1. | caraf | 1. | carwn |
| 2. | kery | 2. | kerwch | 2. | ceri | 2. | cerwch |
| 3. | kar | 3. | karant | 3. | câr | 3. | carant |
| Impers. kerir | Impers. cerir | ||||||
