Grammar and Style. xxxiii
special forms, which are used under certain conditions when the preceding word ends in a Yowel. The author has recognised, as clearly at any rate as most of our Welsh writers, what these conditions are. The word that has a post- Yocalic form must be of the same phrase-unit as the preceding word, that is, there must be such a close syntactical connection between the two words that they are read together without a perceptible pause. Hence he writes :
"Y mae'r yuddewon er yftalm yn achwyn" (p. 3), for r Juddewon' is the subject of ^mae,' and therefore forms with it a single phrase, hence ^r' and not 'yr.'
On the other hand, he writes : " Wele ni yn weifion " (p. 4), and " Mewn llong a alwn ni yr arch " (p. 5)5 for new phrases begin with 'yn* and ^yr' respectively.
But however close the syntactical relation the longer the preceding word the greater the ten- dency to use the normal and not the post-vocaIic form. We have an illustration of both in " Fel na ddeallai'r naill beth a ddywedai y Ilall "(p. 6). Not that Theophilus Evans is invariably guided by these principles ; and the young reader might very profitably try and find instances when he departs from them, and see how the rhythm of these would be improved by the use of post- vocaIic forms.
His thoroughly idiomatic use of the verb-noun and of the absolute construction deserves more than passing reference. When the time referred to has been made clear by a finite verb in the early part of a sentence, the tense need not be repeated, verb-nouns being often used instead. "Daeth Sais . . • a deifyfu ar Dafydd," &c. (p. 22, II. 29-30) ; and a few lines later we have
