Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/malati

• *maleti (KPV)

From Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to grind”). Various explanations exist for how Brythonic ended up with an a root vowel and Goidelic with an e.

• Watkins claimed that the Brythonic was from an athematic present (where a zero grade could be found), and the Goidelic would be from a thematic present. However, Schumacher points out that a laryngeal-final athematic present would be expected to produce a weak verb, for which no trace in Celtic exists.^[1]
• Schumacher thinks that the Brythonic root variant was derived from the zero grade and was the sole present allomorph in Proto-Celtic. He further explains the Irish stem mel- as generated by some secondary analogical means, via some expectation that the present should be in the e-grade. Schumacher cites two possible sources of analogy. One of them was *gʷeleti (“to graze”), which had similar phonological shape and shared a semantic field. The other influence would be the subjunctive, which in strong verbs is expected to have the e-grade which also often occurs in the present stem as well.^[1]
• Matasović is agnostic on which root vowel came first, merely remarking that the Brythonic reflects the zero grade and Goidelic the e-grade.^[2]
• Darling integrates both the *mal- and *mel- stems in a single present paradigm, starting with a simple e-grade thematic present *melh₂-e-ti. Whenever the thematic vowel was *e (in the 2nd person, and in the 3rd-person singular), it would be coloured by the laryngeal into *a, which would then feed Joseph's Law (*eRa > *aRa, where *R is a resonant), and turn the root vowel into *a; the Brythonic present stem can be derived by leveling the a across the present stem. Meanwhile, the forms with thematic vowel *-o- would not be a-coloured and thus the root vowel remains as *e; the Goidelic forms would be derived from leveling the e across the present stem.^[3]

*malati

1. to grind, to crush

• *molos

• Proto-Brythonic: *malɨd
  • Breton: mala
  • Cornish: melias
  • Welsh: malu
• Old Irish: meilid
  • Irish: meil
  • Scottish Gaelic: meil
  • Manx: beihll