Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T00:50:37.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Old Irish teoir and cetheoir

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Warren Cowgill
Warren Cowgill*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It seems to be a universally accepted view that the Old Irish feminine numerals, nom. teoir, tenir ‘three’, acc. and gen. téora, dat. téoraib, and nom. cethéoir ‘four’, acc. and gen. cethéora, dat. cethéoraib, are derived from PIE stem forms *tisor- and *kwetesor-, with a different ablaut grade of the suffix from the equivalent Aryan forms, Skt. tisrás, Av. tišrō ‘three’ and Skt. cátasras, Av. cataŋrō ‘four’. This is the view presented by the Celtic handbooks, e.g. Thurneysen, A grammar of Old Irish 246; Pedersen, VKG 2.127-8; Lewis and Pedersen, CCG 188. Cf. also Pokorny, KZ 47.160-1 (1916); Walde-Pokorny 1.512, 753, and Ida. etym. Wb. 642-3.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 33 , Issue 3-Part1: July-September , September 1957, pp. 341 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © 1957 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Monosyllabic téoir in the Félire of Oengus, but dissyllabic, teüir, in one of the poems in the Milan Codex, Thesaurus palaeohibernicus 2.291.6 (Thurneysen 242).

2 Some Avestan manuscripts read tišarō rather than tišrō, and this form, often cited in the older literature, is still quoted by Pedersen 2.127. But Geldner adopts the reading tišrō in his edition of the Avesta, and Bartholomae, Grdr. d. iran. Phil. 1.1.111 and Altiran. Wb. col. 802, gives only the form tišrō without mentioning the manuscript variant tišarō.

3 Whether ii or iëi is the regular Old Irish outcome of *eö before a final i-quality consonant is at present unclear to me, but the chances for analogic disturbance seem greater in siëir than in iich.

4 The 'féotar 'they spent the night' mentioned by Pokorny (162) is essentially different, since here Pokorny assumes first syncope of *ve-vos-ont-ar (with *e and *o separated by *w) to *ve-odd-ar, and then a postsyncope contraction to féotar.

5 While the dissyllabic teuir of Thesaurus palaeohibernicus 2.291.6 may find its explanation in the suspicion expressed by Pedersen, 1.297 Anm., that the spelling éiui may indicate a dissyllabic pronunciation of éo before palatal consonants, for which Pedersen was, however, unable to find examples. Evidently éoi was normally monosyllabic, but did not require much distortion in pronunciation to function metrically as two syllables.

6 The Gaulish and British development could also be accounted for by a Proto-Celtic change of *-sr- to *-dr-; but the treatment of *-dr- in Old Irish is an extremely difficult problem (for views cf. Pedersen 1.112-3, Marstrander NTS 4.426-8, and Thurneysen 74), with which it seems best not to become involved here.

7 This paper is expanded from a footnote in my dissertation, The Indo-European long-vowel preterits (Yale University, 1957; not yet published).