Chapter XI The Irregular Verbs
The irregular verbs are:—
môs (earlier mones), to go.
dôs (earlier dones), to come.
dôn, to bear or carry.
drŷ, to bring.
rŷ, to give.
gǒdhvos, to know.
Of these, môs and dôn are each made up of two different verbs. The irregularities of dôs, drŷ, and rŷ are due to contractions, and those of gŏdhvas chiefly to its being compounded with bos, to be.
There are irregularities also in the auxiliary verbs gwîl, to do, and gally, to be able, but these have been already given in Chapter IX.
In earlier Cornish the inflected forms of the irregular verbs were freely used, but later these are comparatively rare, and the impersonal and auxiliary forms became so much commoner that the full inflected form can only be gathered from the early writings and from the rather imperfect paradigms given by Lhuyd.
It is not necessary to give anything more than the inflected verbs here, for the impersonal and auxiliary tenses can easily be worked out from these on the model of the regular verb. These are given without pronouns, though of course pronouns are used, as with other verbs.
In the latest Cornish the infinitives of môs, dôs, drŷ, rŷ, were often used colloquially to express the imperative, without much discrimination between singular and plural. These verbs, especially môs and dôs, are generally found in late Cornish in the auxiliary form with gwîl and menny, but rarely in the simple inflected.