What is "tá sé fágtha an cholaiste" mean? Is it meant to mean "he has left the college"? Isn't this just poor Irish adopting English syntax? You may be making reference to the fact that younger native speakers have a more English syntax and that that may be the realistic future of the language???

I understand O'Nolan to mean that there is an understood relative clause and copula.
Is breá an lá é = is breá an lá [a is] é.

I’ve always translated them in my mind to English as “the day that it is, is fine” – now, this might me being too Polish- or English-centric, but I’d read is breá an lá is é as “the day that is it, is fine” and it makes less sense to me. I’ve always interpreted the last pronoun in those cases as the subject, not the predicate, of the embedded relative clause. That’s why I wrote is breá (an lá is é é) as my suggestion of the full clause.

But I guess since the embedded clause identifies the thing/person referred to with the pronoun and the definite noun before it, it doesn’t matter much which one really is the subject and which one is the predicate… So maybe is é does make sense. But that’s why I’d really prefer GÓN to give full expanded sentence whenever he invokes the ellipsis in his explanations.

is breá (an lá is é é) doesn't mean anything.

is breá an lá é = is breá an lá (a is) é = (the day that it is) is nice.

as you’d put it:
an lá (a is) é doesn’t mean anything

There’s no such thing as a is, the relative copula is just is (or as if you prefer that spelling).

I know (a is) is a notation used by GÓN to indicate the relative copul, I just didn’t use it. I think I was clear on this, but maybe I wasn’t. My suggestion then was is breá an lá (a is é) é then. If you mean this doesn’t make sense either, I’m willing to accept that, but I’d love to read something explaining why it’d be wrong.

Well, I don't know what interference from Polish there might be, so I can't guarantee to explain it to your satisfaction.

Is breá an lá é: Subject é, Verb is, Apparent predicate breá an lá. Meaning: it is a nice day (indefinite, although the Irish has "an lá", and so this needs further explanation). "Breá an lá" is an odd predicate. If you had is lá breá é, then the syntax would be immediately graspable.

O'Nolan claimed - although all claims of ellipsis are hypothetical of course, as you're merely coming up with a way of regularising the grammar - that this meant: is breá an lá a is é. The verb is still "is". The Predicate is breá. The Subject: An lá (a) is é: the day that it is. Similar to: an lá atá ann. (The day that exists) is nice.

If you say is breá an lá (a is é) é, then you have é as the subject and is as the verb, and the predicate becomes "breá an lá is é", but then the meaning gets lost. As a copula of classification, it should be "it is an X" or "it is (adj)". But "breá an lá is é" is just not an indefinite noun or an adjective. For a start, it does not explain why the article is in there (which is the point O'Nolan was trying to explain).

No, the structure I have in mind is this:

• the outer predicate: breá ‘fine’,
• the outer subject: an lá ((a) is é) é ‘the day that it is’, which is relative and consists of:
  
  • the antecedent and the predicate: an lá ‘the day’,
  • relative clause ((a) is é) é ‘that it is’:
    
    • the inner subpredicate é separating the subject from direct contact with the copula,
    • the inner subject: the last é ‘it’

But maybe it is nonsense , I don’t have any good examples with the predicate being the antecedent of the relative is followed directly by the subject (GÓN gives pronoun-less examples of the antecedent being the subject, and also examples with the pronoun but with some other relation: antecedents being temporal clauses, possessors, etc. – what he calls dative, genitive, etc. relation – but no examples with predicate antecedents as far as I can tell). So maybe you can’t do that in Irish.

It does mean "He has left the college". Most think it's just a natural development of the Perfect in Munster Irish.

So first we had "Arna + verbal noun" constructs replaced by "Tar éis + verbal noun". Then the "tar éis" forms are slowly replaced by verbal adjective constructs with "ag". The later stage is more advanced in Munster where "Tá an X ite agam" type sentences are far more common than in other dialects. Kerry and Waterford were even further along the path of replacing tar éis with verbal adjective phrases than Cork, since we still find "tar éis" to some degree in Cork literature, but it's mostly confined to "tar éis teacht" in Kerry and the Déise. So we might say Connacht and Ulster have the most conservative perfect structure, followed by Cork and then Kerry.

Finally at some point in the 19th Century verbal adjective constructs with direct objects like "Tá sé fágtha an cholaiste" start to appear in Kerry and Déise Irish. They are in the work of Ó Criomhthain and even in quite old Tipperary texts. At this point they're a reasonably common part of colloquial Kerry Irish.

To me it seems more likely to be an internal development rather than English influence, since it appears in the speech of very isolated monolingual speakers in the 1880s in exactly those dialects making the heaviest use of the verbal adjective perfect. I'd have to check, but I think Amhlaoibh Ua Súilleabháin has some examples as well.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I don't fully remember it, so I shouldn't have brought it up. If I remember right it was that read in the typical way it was TSF, but in reality there was some kind of implied apposition. Somewhat like "Tá sé ag dul an cnoc suas" seems to be dropping the genitive, but is actually an accusative with adverbial force. Again I don't remember the specifics. I'll try to find it.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

It's funny how this comes up even in older forms of Irish. Keating is often given as the introductory Early Modern Irish author, but in reality his style is very hard to read and quite far removed from modern spoken Irish. He doesn't use Classical forms, but he does use Bardic purple prose. Then there are some examples of Early Modern Irish which strictly speaking are closer to Classical Irish morphologically than Keating and so have plenty of older grammar he lacks, but their overall style is much easier to read.


Yes, I'd agree with this.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal