Scottish Gaelic grammar
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This article describes the grammar of the Scottish Gaelic language.
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[edit] Grammar overview
Scottish Gaelic is a synthetic language. Nouns and pronouns, adjectives and articles are marked for up to four cases: nominative or base form, vocative, genitive, and 'dative' or 'prepositional case'. There is no accusative case. There are a number of differing declensional paradigms, and case forms vary between gender class and there are a number of different minor declensional paradigms. Initial consonant mutations form a crucial part of the case system. The case system is now under tremendous pressure and many speakers employ a greatly reduced system to a varying extent.
The distribution of the vocative and genitive cases is roughly comparable to other western European languages. The 'nominative' or base form is simply the unmarked form. There is no case marking for grammatical subject versus direct object. The 'dative' or 'prepositional case' perhaps requires clarification. The term 'dative' is used in most traditional grammars, in all scholarly texts concerned with the early periods of the language, and also in some leading recent linguistic descriptions of the modern language.
Yet in view of its accepted use in the context of other well-studied languages (German, Latin for example), the use of the term 'dative' case applied to modern Scottish Gaelic is potentially rather misleading since dative case marking alone can not be used to convey the relation of indirect object, nor can nouns be dative-marked unless in a prepositional phrase. Rather, because 'dative' case marking is confined to marking nouns (and articles and adjectives) after prepositions, several recent linguistic texts avoid the term 'dative' in favour of 'prepositional case'. A few prepositions do not dative-mark their complements, using unmarked case or genitive case.
Nouns are also marked for number, which may be singular, dual (vestigially) or plural (more than two items). Dual forms of nouns are only found after the numeral dà' (two), where they are obligatory, and only a few nouns have distinct dual forms, all other nouns having dual forms that are the same as the singular. Plurals are formed in a variety of ways (comparable with German, Welsh), including suffixation and i-mutation (cf umlaut) with modification of final consonant or vowel or both.
Nouns and pronouns have masculine or feminine grammatical gender (the old neuter gender class having been lost), as in French or Welsh. Gender is linked with the case forms of nouns, affects the form of articles and causes agreement phenomena with adjectives, articles and anaphoric personal pronouns. The gender of a small number of nouns differs between dialects. A very small group of nouns have declensional patterns that suggest mixed gender characteristics. Foreign nouns that are fairly recent loans arguably fall into a third gender class (discussed by Black), if considered in terms of their declensional pattern. It is arguable that feminine gender is under pressure and that the system may be becoming simplified with the masculine class being on the rise or at least parts of the maculine paradigm invading the feminine.
Adjectives show agreement according to gender, case and definiteness (cf German).
Interestingly, some prepositions exhibit different forms when followed by the article.
Verbal constructions may make use of synthetic verb forms which are marked to indicate person (the number of such forms is limited), tense, mood, and voice (active, impersonal/passive). Conjugational paradigms are remarkably consistent between verbs, with the two copular or 'be' verbs being exceptional. In the paradigm of the verb, the majority of verb-forms are not person-marked and independent pronouns are required (as in English). Alongside constructions involving synthetic verb forms, analytic (or 'periphrastic') verbal constructions are extremely frequently used and in many cases are obligatory; (compare English "be + -ing" verbal constructions). These structures also convey tense, aspect and modality.
So-called 'verbal nouns' play a crucial role in the verbal system, being used in periphrastic verbal constructions preceded by a preposition where they act as the sense verb and a copular verb conveys tense information, in a pattern that is familiar from English. True nouns from the point of view of their morphology and inherent properties (they have gender and case) and their occurrence in what are (or were historically) prepositional phrases, yet playing a verbal semantic and syntactic role in such core verbal constructions, verbal nouns have both verbal and nominal characteristics. English '-ing' forms are in many respects very much comparable. In other constructions verbal nouns play a role like infinitives in for example German.
Traditional grammars use the terms 'past' and 'future tense' and 'subjunctive' in describing Scottish Gaelic verb forms, however modern scholarly linguistic texts reject many of these terms which are borrowed from the traditional study of other languages including Latin and traditional English grammar. Very different from that found in Irish, the tense-aspect system of Gaelic is ill-studied; Macaulay (1992) gives a reasonably comprehensive account.
Gaelic shares with other Celtic languages a number of interesting typological features:
- Verb Subject Object basic word order in simple sentences with non-periphrastic verbal constructions; a typological characteristic relatively uncommon among the world's languages
- Prepositional pronouns or 'conjugated prepositions': complexes historically derived from the fusion of preposition + pronoun are obligatory (for most prepositions). Examples: from the preposition aig 'at' - agam (at me), agad (at you).
- The absence of a verb to have: instead, verbal possession is expressed prepositionally, usually with the preposition aig (that is, by saying that something is at or on a person, cf. Russian у):
- tha taigh agam — I have a house (lit. a house is at me)
- Similarly, the absence of a verb "to own": ownership is expressed using genitive forms or prepositionally with "le" (that is, by saying something is "with" a person):
- "Tha an cat sin le Iain." - Iain owns that cat (lit., "Is the cat [*that*] with Iain.")
- Emphatic pronouns: A distinction is made between the ordinary pronouns, like mi and thu, and their emphatic counterparts, mise, thusa, and so forth, which express a contrast to other persons. For example:
- tha i bòidheach — she's beautiful
- tha ise bòidheach — she's beautiful (as opposed to somebody else)
Grammatical emphasis carries over into other situations:
- an taigh aicese — her house
- chuirinn-sa — I would put
- na mo bheachd-sa — in my opinion
- Copula: Gaelic has two verbs that both mean "to be" (though some grammar books treat them as two parts of a single suppletive verb): tha is used to ascribe a property to a noun or pronoun, whereas in general usage is is used to identify a noun or pronoun as a complement. ('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'.
- tha mise sgìth — I am tired
- is mise Eòghann — I am Ewan.
It is, however, possible to use tha to say that one thing is another thing by turning it into a property:
- tha mi nam Albannach — I am a Scot (lit. I am in my Scot)
- Is e Albannach a th' annam — I am a Scot (lit. it's a Scot that's in me).
Another way to think of the difference between tha and is is that tha describes temporary states:
- "Tha mi sgith" -- I am tired. (or, lit. "Am I tired.")
- "Tha an duine reamhair" -- The man is fat. (or, lit., "Is the man fat.")
Whereas, is describes more permanent conditions -- that is, states of being that are intrinsic:
- 'S e taigh beag a' th'ann. -- It's a small house. (or lit., "Is it house small that is in it.")
- As in other Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic lacks a number of verbs that are commonly found in other languages. This includes modals and psych-verbs; examples 'like', 'prefer', 'be able to', 'manage to', 'must'/'have to', 'make'='compel to'. These functions are instead fulfilled by periphrastic idiomatic constructions involving various prepositional phrases and the copula or other verb, some of which involve highly unusual syntactic patterns.
- Genitival constructions are syntactically very unusual when compared to non-Celtic western European languages, having been frequently compared with the construct state in Afro-Asiatic and particularly Semitic languages.
- Verb forms and tense
Tense is marked in Gaelic in a number of ways.
Present tense is formed by use of the verb "tha" and the verbal noun (or participle) form of the main verb.
- Tha mi a' bruidhinn. (am I at speaking) = "I am speaking", or "I speak".
Simple past tense in regular verbs is indicated by lenition of the initial consonant:
- The verb bruidhinn (pronounced [ˈpriɪɲ] means "speak", but bhruidhinn mi (pronounced [ˈvriɪɲ mi]) means "I spoke."
For the English speaker learning Gaelic, it is sometimes difficult to learn to listen to the beginning of a word for its time indicator rather than the end (in English, the end of a verb is marked with an -ed to indicate past tense).
Unlike English, Gaelic allows for the inflexion of a verb to indicate future tense independent of a helping verb.
- Bruidhinnidh mi = 'I speak', or, 'I will speak'. Among other uses, this formation can also denote states, or habitual action as in "I speak (at times/occasionally/often)".
Constructions formed with the verb bi plus the verbal noun can denote states, habitual action or future time:
- Bidh mi a' bruidhinn = 'I speak'; 'I will be speaking'
- Possessive Determiners
Gaelic uses possessive determiners (my, your, their, etc.) differently than English. In Gaelic, possessive determiners are used mostly to indicate "ownership" or "possession" of body parts or family -- that is, things or relationships that are permanent. Thus, one would say
- mo chas = my leg
- do cheann = your head
- a màthair = her mother; a h-athair = her father. An "h-" is prefixed to vowel-initial words.
- a mhàthair = his mother
- ar pàrantan = our parents, ar n-athair = our father. An "n-" is prefixed to vowel-words.
- ur teaghlach = your (polite, plural) family, ur n-athair = your father
- an teaghlach = their family, am bràthair = their brother. Before words beginning with b, p, f, or m, "am" is used.
But to refer to non-permanent "possession," one uses the preposition "aig," as described above:
- an taigh aige = his house (the house at him)
- an leabhar agam = my book (the book at me)
[edit] Articles
Gaelic has a definite article but no indefinite article:
- an taigh — 'the house', taigh — '(a) house'
The form of the (definite) article depends on the number, gender, case of the noun. The following table shows the basic paradigm, but the article is given in an abstract form.
| singular | plural | ||
| masculine | feminine | ||
| nominative | AN | AN +L | NA |
| dative | AN +L | ||
| genitive | AN +L | NA | NAN |
The superscript "+L" indicates that the following word is lenited. The actual realization of the capitalized forms in the paradigm above depends on the initial sound of the following word, as explained in the following tables:
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[edit] Example paradigms
The following examples show how the definite article is used with several classes of nouns, depending on the first one or two letters.
[edit] Masculine noun paradigms
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[edit] Feminine noun paradigms
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[edit] References
- Mark, Colin (2Rev Ed edition (29 Mar 2006)). Gaelic Verbs: Systemised and Simplified. Glasgow: Steve Savage Publishers Limited. ISBN 978-1904246138.
- Calder, George (1923, reprint 1990). A Gaelic Grammar. Glasgow: Gairm. ISBN 978-0-901771-34-6.
- Dwelly, Edward (1901–11). The Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary, 10th edition (1988), Glasgow: Gairm. ISBN 978-1-871901-28-3.
- Gillies, H. Cameron (1896). Elements of Gaelic Grammar, Reprint (2006)(paperback), Vancouver: Global Language Press. ISBN 978-1-897367-00-1.
- Black, Ronald (1997). Cothrom Ionnsachaidh. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Celtic. ISBN 0906981336.
- Lamb, William (1992). Scottish Gaelic. Munich: Lincom Europa. ISBN 3895864080.
- Macaulay, Donald (1992). The Celtic Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23127-2.
- Ó Maolalaigh, Roibeard; Iain MacAonghuis (1997). Scottish Gaelic in Three Months. Hugo's Language Books. ISBN 978-0-85285-234-7.
[edit] See also
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