Old and Middle Welsh inflected prepositions allowed either overt or null objects.
This agreement runs counter to the way the syntax of prepositions works in Middle Welsh, since prepositions never agree with nominal objects.
Many varieties of present-day Welsh have a verb meaning 'fetch' that derives historically from a form of the Middle Welsh complex preposition yn ol 'after'.
For this to be a case of degrammaticalization, it is necessary to demonstrate that yn ol in Middle Welsh does indeed behave like a preposition, and that nol in the relevant varieties of present-day Welsh is a verb.
The development of Middle Welsh yn ol as grammaticalization.
This lexical use of ol is relatively infrequent in Middle Welsh texts.
A number of syntactic and semantic facts show that grammaticalization of yn ol as a preposition was already complete in Middle Welsh. The object of yn ol is no longer restricted to noun phrases that denote entities that can plausibly have (foot)prints or tracks.
Yn ol in Middle Welsh is also used in a temporal meaning 'after (in time)'.
The two uses discussed so far account for the majority of cases of yn ol in Middle Welsh texts, but some other uses are worth noting.
For the future development of the preposition, one particular sense for yn ol, namely 'according to', is of great importance, even though it is rare, albeit attested, in Middle Welsh. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (the University of Wales dictionary, R.
Again, this is paralleled in other languages, for instance German nach 'after'> 'according to', although present-day Welsh has perhaps gone further than most in abandoning the spatial and temporal meanings of Middle Welsh yn ol entirely, in favor of the meaning 'according to', which in present-day Welsh is the only usual meaning of yn ol.