Now one thing I find very confusing in the
Caighdeán. A short introduction (which on this forum is probably unnecessary, but I’ll keep it) follows.
Goidelic languages have VSO word order. Additionally all of them have gerund (verbal noun) constructions similar to English continuous tenses.
It goes like this:
Táim ag ithe (Munster)
Tá mé ag ithe (the rest)
Tha mi ag itheTa mee g’eebe.pres pron.1.sg at eat.gerundlit. ‘Am (I) at eating’
which means ‘I’m eating’.
Verbal nouns take their object in genitive, thus ‘he is eating the apple’ is (I’ll limit this to just Irish and Scottish):
Tá sé ag ithe an úillTha e ag ithe an ubhailbe.pres pron.3.sg.masc at eat.gerund art-def.masc.gen apple.sg.genlit. ‘Is he at eating of the apple’
Interestingly: if the apple is indefinite,
Irish dialects keep the genitive and the sentence just loses the definite article, ‘he’s eating an apple’:
Tá sé ag ithe úillIs he at eating of appleBut
Scottish uses nominative-accusative in this case (and not a genitive, as before):
Tha e ag ithe ubhalIs he at eating appleIrish also would lose the genitive (and use nom-acc.) if the indefinite noun was further attributed (eg. ‘he’s eating a small apple’
tá sé ag ithe úll beag).
When we intend to use a personal pronoun as the object, a problem appears, because the pronouns do not decline in the Gaelics, they have only nominative-accusative forms (so one cannot say that
the bear is at eating of me).
Because of that the Proto-Irish began using the possessive pronouns here. Possessive pronouns are put before the noun they govern, in contrast to the genitive (similar to English
eating of me vs
my eating) and the sentence ‘the bear is eating me’ sounded somewhat like:
*Tá an mathghamhain / béar ag m’ithebe.pres art-def.masc.nom bear.nom.sg at pron.1.sg.pos eat.gerundlit. ‘Is the bear at my eating’
EDIT: and, as explained later, also something like
*Tá an mathghamhain / béar do m’ithe ‘is the bear to my eating’, as it seems
ag and
do were interchangeable when governing verbal nouns at some point in the older language.
The problem is, the Gaels seem to not like clusters of prepositions and short pronouns when they stand next to each other, especially when they fulfil a special grammatical role. And they contract them. By chance, each of the major dialects contracted them differently.
A
very simplified picture follows.
In Scotland they were pretty consistent (so we’ll begin here):
gam (←
ag mo + lenition, ‘at my’)
gad (←
ag do + lenition, ‘at thy’)
ga (←
ag a + lenition, ‘at his’; no lenition, ‘at her’)
gar (←
ag ar + n- with vowel, ‘at our’)
gur (←
ag (bh)ur + n- with vowel, ‘at y’all’s’)
gaN (←
ag aN, where N is a nasal depending on the following word, ‘at their’)
And so in Scottish Gaelic:
‘the bear is eating me’, ‘the bear is eating thee’, ‘the bear is eating him’, ‘the bear is eating her’, ‘the bear is eating us’, ‘the bear is eating y’all’, ‘the bear is eating them’ is respectively:
Tha am mathan gam ithe,
Tha am mathan gad ithe,
Tha am mathan ga ithe,
Tha am mathan ga h-ithe,
Tha am mathan gar n-ithe,
Tha am mathan gur n-ithe,
Tha am mathan gan itheIn Ulster – the part of Ireland closest to Scotland – it keeps being pretty simple.
Ag typically disappears, the third person pronouns get lengthened and we get:
‘the bear is eating me’, ‘the bear is eating thee’, ‘the bear is eating him’, ‘the bear is eating her’, ‘the bear is eating us’, ‘the bear is eating y’all’, ‘the bear is eating them’:
Tá an béar (ag) m’ithe,
Tá an béar (ag) d’ithe,
Tá an béar á ithe,
Tá an béar á hithe,
Tá an béar (ag) ár n-ithe,
Tá an béar (ag) bhur /mur/
n-ithe,
Tá an béar á n-itheIn Ulster
bhur is pronounced /mur/ and sometimes also written as
mur.
In Munster something similar happens – from
ag a- remains, the pronoun typically keeps its consonant, third person pronouns are lengthened:
‘the bear is eating me’, ‘the bear is eating thee’, ‘the bear is eating him’, ‘the bear is eating her’, ‘the bear is eating us’, ‘the bear is eating y’all’, ‘the bear is eating them’:
Tá an béar am ithe,
Tá an béar ad ithe,
Tá an béar á ithe,
Tá an béar á hithe,
Tá an béar ár n-ithe,
Tá an béar bhur n-ithe,
Tá an béar á n-itheBut Connacht is problematic. Here
ag + a vowel is lenited, becomes
agh + V. Then this /gh/ [ɣ] is reanalyzed as /dh/, because lenited /d/ is pronounced the same.
Ag mo,
ag do, etc. start to be pronounced similarly to Scottish as /gə mo/, /gə do/… Also
do ‘to, for’ in Connacht becomes pronounced as /gə/ (as if spelt
go). Connacht grammarians (or so I think I’ve read somewhere, but now I cannot find any actual source on it) of the 19th century decide that it’s not really
ag + pronoun, but
do (=‘to, for’) + pronoun. The confusion might have been reinforced by the fact, that
do actually often governs the verbal noun (but not in this very construction).
On the other hand, as noted at the end, in the Middle Irish (and perhaps Classical Gaelic?)
ag and
do were commonly used interchangeably in all constructions involving verbal nouns (and
ag finally won everywhere in continuous progressive sentences), so some of these Connacht contractions might actually come from
do (if they contracted before
ag won over
do here), so there might have been no confusion here actually…
And so we have in writing:
‘the bear is eating me’, ‘the bear is eating thee’, ‘the bear is eating him’, ‘the bear is eating her’, ‘the bear is eating us’, ‘the bear is eating y’all’, ‘the bear is eating them’:
Tá an béar do m’ithe,
Tá an béar do d’ithe,
Tá an béar dhá ithe,
Tá an béar dhá hithe,
Tá an béar dhár n-ithe,
Tá an béar dho’ur n-ithe,
Tá an béar dhá n-itheBut
do mo (before a vowel
do m’) is read with [g], like
go mo,
do do (
do d’) is read like
go do etc., and
dhá is read just as if written, more etymologically,
ghá… (
EDIT: or not more etymologically, as it actually make sense that the lengthening comes from contraction of two vowels:
do +
a, and
ag + a would just give short
*gha?).
Also in Connacht all possessive pronouns in the plural are commonly pronounced the same, as /ə/, and all the plural contractions here (
dhár,
dho’ur,
dhá) as /ɣaː/.
There is also a similar passive construction, ‘the bear is being eaten by me’ is literally ‘the bear is at its eating at (=by) me’
Tá an béar á ithe agam, with the same contractions. But some writers supposedly made a written distincion between /ɣaː/ in progressive written
ghá (as if from
ag) and in passive written
dhá (as if from
do).
As an effect of all this, the creators of the official standard believed the 19th century grammarians, creating this monstrosity (all the sentences in the same order as earlier):
Tá an béar do m’ithe,
Tá an béar do d’ithe,
Tá an béar á ithe,
Tá an béar á hithe,
Tá an béar dár n-ithe,
Tá an béar do bhur n-ithe,
Tá an béar á n-itheWhich makes no sense at all, as it does not agree with any dialect, with any dialect’s pronunciation, nor with etymology (but it somehow keeps the richness of the language, as it revives the usage of
do in the progressive sentences).
Interestingly, it seems in Manx this construction died out and one just uses the nominative-accusative pronoun as an object, ‘the bear is eating me’:
Ta’n maghouin g’ee meeor something like that…
Nice
comparison of different forms from Munster to Scotland and
a general description of a progressive affirmative sentence with a verbal noun in Irish can be found in the GnaG.
On the Fòram na Gàidhlig there is a
subject about pronoun object in Scottish Gaelic.
What I’m missing for a fuller picture is how similar passive sentences are constructed in Scotish and Manx or if they exist there at all – did there also the constructions of
ag + pronoun and
do + pronoun mix? But judging from the fact that on Mann
ag+pronoun disappeared and Scottish seems to ignore the genitive more often, there is little chance it remained as a separate construction…
EDIT: but as it
was also discussed on this forum, it seems that in Middle Irish
ag and
do were used quite interchangeably in progressive, passive, and infinitive-like construction (where
do won and changed to
a in modern language), so some of those contractions might actually come from
do and not
ag. It doesn’t change the fact that the Caighdeán
do mo,
do do,
do bhur forms are not actually used anywhere.
EDIT2: It seems
Scottish has two similar passive constructions. One with
aig, equivalent to Irish progressive passive.
The other is perfective with a different preposition –
air ’after’ ← OIr.
iar, used in this form only with verbal nouns in the perfective expressions (but it has the same form as
air ‘on’ coming from merging of OIr.
for and
ar, equivalent to Irish
ar) – thanks Lughaidh for pointing this out.
So ‘the bear is (has been) eaten’ is
tha am mathan air a ithe lit. ‘is the bear after its eating’ and ‘the bear is being eaten’ is
tha am mathan ga ithe (which can also mean active ‘the bear is eating it/him’). I am not clear if one can provide the agent of such a passive action, as one can in Irish – if
agam at the end for ‘by me’ makes any sense in Scottish.