Hi Everyone. I'm reading Studies in Modern Irish: Part 1 by Gearóid Ó'Nualláin (GÓN) which can be found in the following link:
https://ia801701.us.archive.org/21/item ... 01onol.pdf

On page 4, GÓN focuses on the the classification copula which is what I'm hoping to get some help with. I will probably split this question into two. I will go through some "types" outlined in the book, ask for clarifications on what I think it could translate to or ask it to be translated if I don't know what it means.

Type 5: Is doigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé = “What I think is that he/it will come”?
Is liomsa an leabhar san (is liomsa stands for is rud liomsa?) - “That book belongs to me!”?
As well GÓN states "The predicate is a prepositional phrase. In the second example liomsa is equivalent to rud liomsa". I'm assuming the predicate it refers to is from the first example above which is "liom", I'm unsure what the first sentence exactly translates into so what is the predicate in the english translation?

In Type 10 which is the emphatic form of type 5, GÓN says "Is doigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé" is an "identification" not a "classification" sentence. What does this mean?

Type 4, (V)PS: the predicate is a proper name “but in reality is used as a general term”. One source says: "This is important as this type of sentence is classificatory and not one of identification, despite the fact that the predicate is a proper noun. In sentences like Éamonn a athair, the verb is dropped." I get that: Is Éamonn a athair becomes Éamonn a athair. But what does it mean by "is a general term and not a proper noun". What would an example of each look like?

On pg 148 of "New Era Grammar of Modern Irish, it translates as ' his father is "an Éamonn" '. There is a book written called "What a complete Aisling" (https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/book ... -1.3625583).
If I were to say to someone "She is an Aisling", would this be the same context as this Type 4 copula?

What do the following sentences mean?

is Alba fé hainm don chrích sin
**Is Connla a bíodh ag Niamh air = It is Connla that Niamh is for him?
Ní Aill an Tuim is mó thugaidís uirthi ach Aill an Mhairnéalaigh
Nasaret ainm an bhaile sin: Should this original one be "Nasaret is ainm an bhaile sin"? assuming the is is dropped.
If the above question is the correct way to try and comprehend this type of copula, where should the omitted copulas be in the above few sentences?

**On pg 148 of "New Era Grammar of Modern Irish", it translates to "Niamh called him Connla". This is where I'm getting confused. How is a sentence like 'His father is "an Éamonn"' the same as "Niamh called him Connla". I would understand if the sentence translated to 'Niamh called him "a Connla"'. How are Type 4 copula sentences typically formed? Could you provide some more examples of a Type 4 copula?

Type 9, PVpS:
- Alba is ea is ainm don chrích sin
- Finnbheannach is eadh is ainm dó

What I don't understand about the above is how come there is a second is in a sentence like "Finnbheannach is eadh is ainm dó"?
I would have thought it would be written as "Finnbheannach is eadh ainm dó"?.
Moreover, from a previous question I already asked on this website (viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5901), a sentence like "Ailig is ainm dom" is already an emphasised form of "Is ainm dom Ailig". So why re-emphasise what is in my opinion an already an emphasised sentence? (Assuming it was originally something like "Finnbheannach is ainm dó")


Notably On pg 148 of "New Era Grammar of Modern Irish", it is translated to "White-horn is his name".

Thats it for now.
Thank you in advance.

English: I think that he will not come. (ná = nach here)
(btw: "What I think is that he will not come" is: Is é is dóigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé. A somewhat different, emphasized sentence)

In Irish (in the normal, unemphasized classification sentence), dóigh liom is predicate ("likely with me").
In the emphasized identification sentence dóigh liom is part of the subject and é ... ná tiocfaidh sé is predicate.

English isn't really comparable ("think" is predicate here, and "that ..." its object)



the emphasized version is an identification sentence (a pseudo-cleft):
é (an rud) is dóigh liom = ná tiocfaidh sé
Both are definite things: My thought and the fact that he won’t come.
So it resembles sentences like "Is é an rud é", an identification sentence (an rud = é)

1/...

(Is) Éamonn a athair. = Her father is "an" Edmund.

"An Edmond". There are many Edmonds and her father is one of them. He belongs to the class "Edmond".

An identification sentence is:
Is é Éamonn a athair. = (This individual) Edmund is her father.



Yes.

2/...

‘I suppose that he will not come’
ná is Munster for CO nach ‘that not’

A more literal translation would be ‘that he will not come is a thing I consider likely’ where ná tiocfaidh sé ‘that he will not come’ is the subject and dóigh liom (where dóigh is used adjectively for ‘likely, probable’, see 4th meaning in the 2nd definition in FGB) is the predicate and literally means ‘likely with me’ and means ‘my opinion, what I find likely’ analogically to eg. maith liom meaning ‘what I like, what I find good’.


In the first one it is dóigh liom ‘what I find likely’, in the second (rud) liomsa ‘(a thing that is) mine’.


He does not say that is dóigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé is an identification. What he says is that there is only one emphatic form for that sentence, and that the emphatic form is an identification sentence (is é is dóigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé).

Classification sentences (in general) equal one noun phrase – the subject – to another indefinite noun phrase (but, as you see, not always, because prepositional phrases or adjectives might also be predicates) – the predicate. Identification sentences equal the subject to a definite subject.

When you read the page 15, you’ll see that according to GÓN is é is dóigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé stands for is é (an rud) is dóigh liom ná tiocfaidh sé, here the subject is (an rud) is dóigh liom ‘the thing that I find likely’ and the predicate é … ná tiocfaidh sé, so the whole sentence is ‘the thing I find likely is this: that he will not come’.

On the other hand the first example has a classification emphatic form: liomsa is ea an leabhar san. What he says is that you cannot transform the second example this way, you cannot say dóigh liom is ea ná and you need to use the identification if you want to put emphasis here.



It means that a proper noun (one that typically counts as a definite one) is used as an indefinite one. Just a name is given, not referring by itself to any particular person. When you say tagann Éamonn ‘Éamonn comes’ you have some particular Éamonn on your mind and that this very Éamonn comes. When you say is é Éamonn a dhein é ‘It’s Éamonn who did it’ again you are talking about a single specific Éamonn. But when you say is Éamonn a athair you don’t mean ‘Éamonn (a specific person) is his father’ but ‘his father is Éamonn’, ‘his father is a person called Éamonn, is one of many Éamonns in the world, is an Éamonn’. So here it is used as a general term, an indefinite noun that describes some set of objects or persons, and does not refer to a particular one.



‘it is Alba as a name to that land, country’, ‘(a thing that works) as a name to that land is Alba’



‘It is Connla that Niamh called him’, ‘it is Connla, (the name) that Niamh had for him’. The preposition ar is often used to describe how somehting or someone is called, compare an sliabh ar a dtugtar… ‘the mountain that is called’, or cad é an Ghaeilge ar…? ‘what is the Irish (word) for…?, how is … called in Irish?’.

So if Niamh had Connla on him, it means Niamh called him Connla.


‘It is not Aill an Tuim that they called it most, but Aill an Mhairnéalaigh’
At least that’s how I understand it. I take the ‘most’ here to mean ‘most often, most commonly’. (or maybe is mó refers to those calling, so ‘it’s not Aill an Tuim that most of them called it…’???)


I would parse this as is Nasaret ainm an bhaile sin ‘the name of that town is Nasaret’.

I am not sure, perhaps Nasaret (an rud) is ainm an bhaile sin would also be possible as ‘the thing that is the name of that town is Nasaret’, but I am not sure if it’s used this way outside of the ainm do … phrase. And I don’t think that you could leave out the is from X is ainm … phrase, because it is not a simple copula but a relative one (‘that is’). Where is this exapmle in the GÓN’s book?



Just as with the Éamonn sentence, here the proper noun (Connla) is used just a generic name, not to refer to specific person with that name.



X is ea Y is another, emphatic way to say is X Y. To say ‘X is his name’ you typically say X is ainm dó ‘(the thing) that is his name is X’, is here is relative copular form, meaning ‘that is’. The subject is the whole is ainm dó ‘that is his name’ phrase. When you transform it into the is ea type sentence, you need to keep the whole subject, so you get X is ea is ainm dó. Why (re-)emphasize this? I’d guess because the X is ainm dó is the default phrase for stating names and isn’t considered emphatic anymore.

Tá mé i ndiaidh an méid atá le rá ag GÓN ar an chopail a léamh, agus is orm atá an tinneas cinn .



That's correct. If it were "It's not AaT that most of them called it", it would be 'Ní A a T a thugadh (or whatever the Munster form is) an cuid is mó acu uirthi".

Sorry for reviving the thread – I come back to it regularly for examples of proper names used after copula as indefinite nouns :P, and this just caught my attention again:



I believe you ‘modernized’ the spelling wrongly here (the original has is … Alba fá h-ainm do’n chrích sin). I have also always assumed this fá h-ainm in this passage is basically ‘under, about a name’ but that would be a weird phrasing, and I wouldn’t expect fá to h-prefix in Keating (but maybe I’m wrong?). Instead I believe this is actually

is Alba ab ainm don chrích sin or dob ainm…

‘it is Alba (the thing) that was a name to that land/country’

mirroring directly phrases like cad is ainm duit? and Tadhg is ainm dom and also the other sentence Alba is eadh is ainm do’n chrích sin.

with fá h- being (relative) past copula. Keating apparently used a lot of copular forms in past, including fá (h-), bá h-, ba, doba, budh, dob, dobudh, robudh, see eg. Appendix to Trí Bior-Ghaoithe an Bháis and the Language section in Stories from Keating’s History of Ireland.

Heh, the wording of this fá h-ainm stuff would haunt me every time I looked at this before. Boy, I do like that feeling when it suddenly clicks and starts making perfect sense.

Me too! Good work.