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Irish is an inflected language, having four cases: ainmneach (nominative and accusative), gairmeach , ginideach and tabharthach (prepositional). The prepositional case is called the dative by convention. Irish nouns are masculine or feminine.
In Old Irish, the process was already grammatical to a large degree, and was limited to applying across words within a single syntactic phrase (e.g. between a noun and a modifying adjective, or between a preposition and the rest of the prepositional phrase).
But note that the term prepositional pronoun also has a different sense, for which see Prepositional pronoun.) Historically, inflected prepositions can develop from the contraction of a preposition with a personal pronoun; however, they are commonly reanalysed as inflected words by native speakers and by traditional grammar.
The object of a compound preposition is in the genitive. Formally, these prepositions are actually prepositional phrases. ar chúl an dorais "behind the door" (lit. "on the back of the door") ar feadh míosa "one month long" (lit. "for the duration of one month") ar son na hÉireann "for Ireland's sake"
There are two kinds of relative clauses in Irish: direct and indirect. Direct relative clauses begin with the leniting relativizer a and the independent form of an irregular verb is used. The direct relative is used when the relative pronoun is the subject or direct object of its clause. (50a) D'imigh na daoine a bhí míshásta thar sáile.
Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to An Caighdeán Oifigiúil , the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland , which regulates both spelling and grammar . [ 1 ]
These similarities include verb–subject–object word order, singular verbs with plural post-verbal subjects, a genitive construction similar to construct state, prepositions with fused inflected pronouns ("conjugated prepositions" or "prepositional pronouns"), and oblique relatives with pronoun copies.
In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, nouns that are the objects of (most) prepositions may be marked with prepositional case, especially if preceded by the definite article. In traditional grammars, and in scholarly treatments of the early language, the term dative case is incorrectly used for the prepositional case.