Talk:Scottish Gaelic grammar

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The approach taken on this page to Scottish Gaelic verbs is pretty obviously derived from outdated grammars that tried to fit this Goidelic language into the grammatical structures of Latin and Greek. The references chosen (Calder, Gillies) would make that clear even if much of the description of verbs is just plain wrong: Verbs are said to have two simple tenses, but almost all Gaelic verbs have 3 tenses; the exceptions are a small number of defective verbs (which have either simple 1 or 2 simple tenses) and the verb "bith" (which has 4). Verbs are said to have "active" and "passive" voice; that might be an acceptable description for transitive verbs, but the voice called "passive" exists also for intransitive verbs like "go" and "be" so calling it "passive" doesn't work and we normally talk about "active" and "impersonal". Verbs are said to have three moods, but actually have only two moods: indicative and imperative. There is no "subjunctive" mood. The indicative mode has three modes: independant, relative, and Dependant (the first two or these are identical in all but one tense). There are at least twice as many "compound tenses" as stated in the article (of course they aren't really tenses at all, but combinations of tense and aspect, but "cpmpound tense" is used in the article and is an acceptable term). As well as these errors, the article doesn't contain any description of the Gaelic verbal noun. It is quite impossible to understand the Gaelic verb system without understanding the uses of verbal nouns, since they are absolutely central and occur extremely frequently; trying to understand gaelic without an understanding of verbal nouns would be a bit like trying to read Caesar without recognising the ablative absolute construction. I would take issue with the description of the copula too, but what's wrong is mostly that there's only a very brief outline of its uses and the distinction between it and the verb "bi" and that is inevitable in an article as short as this one. I dislike the use of the non citation form "tha" instead of "bi". That's like talking about "the verb is" instead of "the verb to be" in English when you intend to include all the forms was/were/am/are/be as well as "is", but I suppose it isn't really "wrong". On the declension of nouns the article says "'dative', so-termed in traditional grammars [better - 'post-prepositional' case]". If there was a single case which sollowed prepositions perhaps we should call it the post-prepositional case, but gaelic is not in that position: a good number of prepositions govern the genitive case, so we are much better off with the tradional "dative" than with the new-fangled "post-prepositional". When talking about declension it would probably be a good idea to mention that the nominative is now used in some cases where the genitive was previously used but the genitive is still alive and well in most of its traditional contexts and that the dative case is dying out rapidly except in a few frozen phrases. There is a complete absence of anything at all on adjectives (declension, relationship to nouns, comparison), adverbs, interrogatives, negations, particles, compound nouns, or clause structure; and an almost complete lack of mention of prepositions and pronouns. I guess someone will have to on the clean-up and completion of this article - and I hope someone other than me finds the time to do it before I decide it has been left too long! --Micheal--MichealT 20:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Contradict

In the first few lines of the overview section, it says there are five cases. But it then goes on to name only: nominative, genitive, vocative and dative. That's four. So which is it? - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 00:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It's probably just a typo, it should be four. Will correct and remove tag. — Zerida ☥ 05:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Five was right. Like Irish, Scottish Gaelic also has a vocative, which is distinct from the nominative in only a few forms (e.g. vocative a Sheumais to nominative Seumas). —Angr 22:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes… So that makes four cases. CapnPrep (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, right. I was seeing what I expected to see in the first list, instead of what was actually there. (What I was expecting to see was "nominative, genitive, accusative and dative", but of course the accusative has fallen together with the nominative in Gaelic.) —Angr 22:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Dependent and independent verb forms

I've just started an article on Dependent and independent verb forms. I wanted to add a link to it from this article, but as far as I can tell this article makes no mention of phenomena like glacaidh e / cha glac e and chunnaic mi / gum faca mi. I don't have good enough sources on Scottish Gaelic grammar to add this info myself, but it would be great if someone could. —Angr 22:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Copula

The sentence "'Is' can be used to ascribe a description to a noun or pronoun, but generally this usage is restricted to fixed expressions, for example: 'Is beag an t-iongnadh' lit. 'Is small the surprise' or 'Is e Gàidheal a th'annam' lit. 'It is a Gael that is in me'." seems to me to be a bit confused. 'Is e Gàidheal a th'annam' does not "ascribe a description to a noun or pronoun", it is rather an example of "in general usage is is used to identify a noun or pronoun as a complement"; the complement is "e a th'annam", and the subject is "Gàidheal"; so the given translation is misleading, because the subject in English is not placed between the [pro]noun component of the complement and a relative clause qualifying it; it should be something like "it that is in me is a Gael" (= "What I am is a Gael").
Also, are there really only two gniomhairean ceangaltach in Gàidhlig? What about "fairich" for example? Surely in "dh'fhairich mi teth" ["I felt hot"] it is very clearly a copular verb? Is there a confusion here caused by the rather weird defective verb "is" (defective because it only has only has three parts: is/as/bu; weird because the present dependent is null in speaking and in writing, but not in semantics) normally being called "the copula", and by "bi" (how I hate to see it called "tha" - for any verb that has an imperative the root is the 2nd person imperative singular, not some other form chosen at random) being confused/conflated with "is" in some very questionable descriptions of our grammar?MichealT (talk) 00:47, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Lenition

The article as it stands makes three completely incorrect statements about lenition:
(a)that lenition affects only initial consonants;
(b) that lenition is always indicated in orthography by writing h after the consonant
(c) that the letters l, n and r do not suffer lenition (when word-initial)
A nice clear example of the difference between lenited and unlenited l can be found in the two phrases "mo leanabh" (my child; the l is palatalised and lenited) and "ar leanabh" (our child: the l is unlenited and palatalised); the difference in sound is very clear. Lenition of n and r is also very audible: compare the initial consonants in Niall (nominative, unlenited palatised n) and "a Neill" (vocative, lenited palatalised n), or in "an righ" (nominative, unlenited unpalatalised r) and "a righ" (vocative, lenited palatalised r - at least for a lot of people; some others pronounce that too unlenited unpalatalised, even though they too have lenited palatalised r in word-final position in words like "air", "tir", and so on). The oddity (which you can see with initial r in the example just given) with l, n and r is that each sounds as if it has at most three forms instead of four - for each of them, one can find at least one pair from the foursome lenited palatalised, unlenited palatalised, lenited unpalatalised, and lenited palatalised where both members of the pair are pronounced the same. Which pairs are merged in which positions (initial, medial, and final) varies from dialect to dialect except in the case of R, where what one would expect to be an unlenited palatalised R is pronounced as an unlenited unpalatalised R in all extant dialects (so that pairing is universal - but other r-pairings are not).
Towards the end of the 19th century several people proposed that lenited l, n, and r should be written lh, nh, and rh and some stuff was published using this convention; but it gained no general acceptance, and has not been used in the last hundred years or more.
Lenition in final position certainly occurs: look at words like "loch", "neamh", "faigh" and so on but here it's just sound, not grammar; also in the middle of words, as in "athair", "sabhal", "odhar" and so on, but again that's about sound not about grammar; but lenition is always about sound, the only reason that we pretend it's about grammar is that a word has several forms which continue to exist despite the phonological reason which originally caused the variation having disappeared, so we invent grammatical rules to explain it. MichealT (talk) 03:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

"Prepositions" section -- possessives

At the end of the prepositions section, the compound preposition + possessive determiner combinations are listed.

However, it looks like someone has confused the infinitive particle a^+L with a', the reduced form of aig.

The way I was taught it, possessives replace a^+L, not combine with it, yet according to the article as it stands, a^+L + mo = gam^+L.... Prof Wrong (talk) 23:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I concur. I think it should be aig (at) and ag (progressive) not a^L (infinitive)Comhreir (talk) 00:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I added this information based on sources like Ó Maolalaigh: "When a^★/a dh' precedes the infinitive [with verbs of motion or expressing intent], the possessive pronouns combine with it to give the following forms: gam^★ etc. Examples: Tha sinn a' dol ga choimhead, Thàinig na caileagan ga dùsgadh, Chaidh Iain gan iarraidh." (§95–96) CapnPrep (talk) 13:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that mixes up a^L the infinitive marker which lenites (this found for example after the object in "air" perfective constructions) with a/ag which is found in progressives (e.g Tha mi a'dol) which does NOT lenite. Only the latter gets inflected as 'gam 'gad etc. The possessive form of a^L is simply mo, do, a, ùr etc.Comhreir (talk) 16:13, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I think I see where the confusion lies now. There is an a^L in structures like Tha Anna [air leabhar a cheannach], Bu toil leam [an doras a fhosgladh], which corresponds to simple possessives in Tha Anna air mo fhaicinn, Bu toil leam do phòsadh. But if there is no object, there is no marker at all (or lenition): Tha Anna air seinn, Bu toil leam falbh.

What the article currently refers to (although this is not all explained) is the infinitival a^L/a dh' in sentences like Chaidh Iain a bhruidhinn ri Seumas, Tha Màiri a' dol a dh'innse dhuinn. This is not the progressive a/ag and yet it still takes the forms gam, gad, etc. with a pronominal object (as in the examples quoted above, unless you believe those examples to be wrong). CapnPrep (talk) 17:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

<comment by Akerbeltz moved to new section below>

Ah, OK, so the problem really is this term "verbal markers"...

When the preposition ann an is followed by a possessive determiner, the two words form a contraction. This also occurs with the verbal markers ag (related to the preposition aig) and a+L. The resulting forms have the same effects on the following word (lenition, consonant insertion) as the possessive determiners.

After all, "ag" is the preposition "aig" and this particular "a" (the "a dh'" one) is the preposition "a"/"do".

To me, when you say "verbal marker", I think of the other leniting "a" -- m.e. "tha mi ri rudeigin a dheanamh" -- as this is something that only seems to be used with verbs.

At the very least, there's two things "a", so the article needs to specify which one it's talking about. Prof Wrong (talk) 11:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It's worse than that, there's about a dozen words all spelled a (or very similar) that have different functions/derivtions. There's

• a "his"
• a (h-) "her"
• a (dh') "to" - reduced form of do
• a (dh') "of" - reduced form of de
• a "vocative particle"
• a "counting particle"
• a "infinitive particle"
• a "relative particle"
• 'a "in" - reduced form of ann an; eg in 'a m' cheann
• a' "at" reduced form of ag before a verbal noun
• á "out of"

Akerbeltz (talk) 12:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Linking consonants

<moved from previous section> Slightly different point but still on the possessives - the way you reworded that is misleading. "her, our, your (pl)" don't require the "insertion" of h- and n- (though it's often described that way) - it's the other way round. The possessives are mo do a a h- , ar n-, ur n-, an and the h- and n- are deleted before non-vowel initial nouns, they're historically part of the possessives i.e. IE esjās > a h-, IE nsaron > ar n-, IE svaron > OI far n- > ar n-. See what I mean? Akerbeltz (talk) 09:45, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure I see what you mean, and I am familiar with the historical facts. For describing the modern grammar it really makes no difference, technically, if we say "insertion before a following vowel" or "deletion unless a vowel follows". Both formulations are "misleading" (from a linguistic point of view), but the first is simpler and corresponds to what is said in the majority of published sources. I don't have any objection to adding more historical detail to the article (there is already some for the definite article, for example), but I imagine that most readers will not be interested in this and won't appreciate seeing it as part of the basic presentation of the various paradigms. CapnPrep (talk) 13:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it's most commonly described the "other way round" but practically speaking I have found in teaching that once explained, people find it much more logical that "something that's there disappears in some cases" (not dissimilar to English a/an) rather than "and if you get a vowel, this thing pops up". I agree on the history and that we should go light on that - which is what I was trying to do. Perhaps if we leave the text as it is but add a small paragraph underneath the table to explain this alternative explanation? Akerbeltz (talk) 13:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Spelling

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not a religious followed of GOC either but we've got conventions crisscrossing wildly on this page. We have léine with the acute but mòr with the grave, some emphatics are hyphenated, some aren't. This raises the interesting question, beyong this page I guess, of whether to follow the old ways or the new. Perhaps we should debate this in a wider context? Akerbeltz (talk) 21:42, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a clearer discussion of the different conventions at Scottish Gaelic#Orthography (and better still that section should be moved into a separate article). In the meantime, if you have any particular preference, I think you can feel free to apply it throughout this article. CapnPrep (talk) 22:03, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually léine with the acute but mòr with the grave isn't a mixture of pre- and post- GOC. Pre-GOChe grave on that o was standard spelling in the South, because that's how most people in Argyll pronounced it. In the North it was an acute, because that's how most people there pronounced it. The committee that was set up to eliminate idiocies like a marker from Harris deducting marks for the grave on that o while a marker from Campbelltown would deduct marks from a paper that used the acute instead, and preferably also the problem that a child might be taught by two teachers who followed different rules in their lessons went completely off the rails and invented an incredibly silly collection of spelling reforms most of which were completely pointless and several of which were a clear (and irresponsible) attempt to divorce the orthography of the language from its phonology, and then the bureaucrats got hold of it and turned it into a draconian set of rules that was to be enforced on everyone. Revisions of GOC have introduced even more anti-phonological idiocies, it's now even more of a mess that when it was first published. If we worry too much about "consistency" (especially in cases like this example where that worry is a complete misunderstanding of what happened before GOC) we will be falling down the same pit as teh originators of GOC (except maybe we will disagree amongst ourselves much less that they did amongs themselves - I've heard some frightful stories about how the "concensus" was formed from some people who were part of it and wish they hadn't been).

I'm not a follower of GOC either but some semblance of consistency would nonetheless be good. We could always form our own consensus for Wikipedia. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:33, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Present dependent bu of copula is

The article gives the following forms of the copula is currently:

Present independent	is
Present relative	as
Present dependent	bu
Past	bu

Is that correct? I thought bu is only past and conditional, not present – present dependent form is basically null, eg. in an toil leat e? or an e cù a th’ ann? the present dependent copula is part of the interrogative an. Wiktionary claims that 'The dependent form, used after particles, is e' which also doesn’t seem right – I believe it’s just a pronoun used regardless of grammatical tense (but I cannot find a simple straight-forward example, the closest I get are independent b’ e labhradh a mhill e and dep. Cha b’ e an clò ciar-dubh nach fhiach 'fhùcadh in Dwelly) Silmethule (talk) 23:18, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Well spotted, I fixed it. You're right, the only other present tense form is a null between negative/interrogative particles and what comes next. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:00, 29 January 2020 (UTC)