Basic Outline of the Grammar of Irish

For Unreconstructed Linguists Only

Irish is an Indo-European language with the same inherited grammatical categories as other languages of the same family. It has the usual parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions; it also has a sub-class of nouns called verbal nouns. It has quite a large catalogue of phonemes. The initial sounds of words in Irish undergo significant morphophonemic changes called mutations in grammaticalised contexts. It is a VSO language; the subject is represented sometimes synthetically by a conjugated verb form, sometimes analytically by a nominal or pronominal form. A verb following a noun constitutes a relative clause. Noun heads precede their modifiers (adjectives or relative clauses).

Nouns

Nouns have gender (masculine and feminine), case (nominative/accusative, genitive, dative, vocative), and number (singular and plural). There are minute traces of neuter gender and dual number left in the modern language. There has been degradation of the case system, with the dative in particular no longer a functioning grammatical category, although many dative forms are common in speech. The use of the genitive has declined markedly in some dialects, although not in others. The following table illustrates the most common declensional pattern in the singular, bád "boat" for masculine o-stems and cos "leg, foot" for feminine a-stems. The dative plural forms shown below are historical, but are obsolete in current speech, having been replaced with the nominative plurals.

Case	bád		cos
	singular	plural	singular	plural
Nominative	bád [ba:d]	báid [ba:d']	cos [cos]	cosa [cos@]
Genitive	báid [ba:d']	bád [ba:d]	coise [cos'i]	cos [cos]
Dative	bád [ba:d]	bádaibh [ba:div']	cois [cos']	cosaibh [cosiv']

(NB: ' represents palatalisation; "@" represents schwa.)

Plural forms are rather fluid in the spoken language, with a variety of plural endings derived from Indo-European stems. For instance, the word léine "shirt" has for plural léinte, léinteacha, léinteachaí, all interchangeable. The first comes from the Indo-European stem in a dental, the second from the stem in a guttural, and the last from a stem in a lenited dental (with -í < -idhe).

Pronouns

Pronouns are structured on the dual axis of person (first, second and third) and number (singular and plural). The third person singular distinguishes two genders, masculine and feminine. A neuter third person singular pronoun ea continues in use as a fossilised predicative particle. The third person pronouns distinguish two cases, one used only as verbal subject and the other used everwhere else (as verbal object, as subject of the copula, or in absolute usage). The absolute forms are historical; the subject forms begin with an s- and have their origin in the copula.

Gender/Number	Absolute (historical)	Subject (with s- of copula)
Masculine singular	é [e:]	sé [s'e:]
Feminine singular	í [i:]	sí [s'i:]
Plural	iad [i:@d]	siad [si:@d]

First and second person pronouns have no case forms. The singulars do have some limited development of absolute forms; but this is a recent development and not inherited.

Person	Subject (historical)	Absolute (recent)
First	mé [m'e:]	me [m'e]
Second	tú [tu:]	tu [tu] thú [hu:] thu [hu]

There are two unrelated forms for the first person plural pronoun "we, us": 1. sinn [s'in'], a historical form used everywhere, and 2. muid [mid'], a recent development from a verbal ending which is used only in northern dialects, but is spreading.

Adjectives

Adjectives are declined only for number, and that only when used attributively. The plurals are formed by the addition of an unstressed vowel whose realisation is phonetically conditioned. The initial phonemes of adjectives do undergo morphophonemic changes associated with the gender/case of the head noun, again only when used attributively. Adjectives have comparative forms, used only with the copula (or a particle níos derived from it); there are no explicit superlative forms, the superlative being expressed syntactically.

Verbs

Verb forms have tense (consuetudinal [present], preterite, past imperfect, future, and secondary future [conditional]), person (first, second and third), number (singular and plural), and mood (indicative, subjunctive and imperative). The subjunctive and imperative moods have no tense (or one tense only). Strictly speaking there is no voice, although each mood-tense category has a "free form" or passive/impersonal, used without any explicit subject. Both transitive and intransitive verbs have these forms; thus itear é [it'@r e:] "it is eaten" and téitear ann [t'e:t'@r aun] "people go there, one goes there". The ending in -r is connected to Indo-European middle voice, and is found in Latin deponents like sequitur "follows", as well as in Tocharian and Hittite.

Synthetic verbal forms conjugated for person and number have undergone decline over the last few centuries. This process has gone much further in the north of the country than in the south, where synthetic forms are more often obligatory, particularly in the preterite. Thus "I was" is expressed in the south by bhíos [v'i:s] but in the north by bhí mé [v'i: m'e:].

A remarkable feature of the verbal system is the pair of forms answering to the English verb "to be":

The substantive is a fully conjugated, normal (although irregular) verb, with most of its forms derived from the IE root beginning with *bh- (Latin fuit, -bit, Sanscrit bhávati, bhuvat, etc.). It also has a true present suppletive form derived from the root *stá- (< sth₂-) (Latin stare, English stand). It's used to express position, time, and (temporary) condition, to predicate most adjectives, in a variety of aspectual structures and in a variety of idioms such as "to have" and "to want".
The copula is not really a verb at all, but a particle used to predicate nouns, both in statements of definition ("He is a man") and identity ("He is the man I was talking about"), with differing syntax. It is derived in part from the root *h₁es- and in part from the root beginning with *bh- (see 1. above). It has only two forms of its own, an unmarked form is "is" and a form ba "was; would be" marked for preterite or conditional use; it has no forms for person or number. It is enclitic and often therefore phonetically assimilated to the next word. As well as predicating nouns, it's used in a large number of idioms, many of them modal. It's also used to topicalise any part of a sentence by fronting it in a cleft structure.

Verbal Nouns

There is no infinitive. Each verb has instead an associated verbal noun, generally based on the same root, which is used to fill the functions of the infinitive, and in many other constructions. Thus with the verbal noun snámh "to swim, swimming, the act of swimming":

        Is maith liom    snámh      [is mah' l'um sna:v]
        is good  with-me to-swim
        "I like to swim"

And similarly:

        Tá snámh   go maith dhuit   [ta: sna:v g@ mah' yit']* 
        is to-swim PT good  for-you
        "Swimming is good for you"

*(where y=gamma)

Verbal nouns are used in prepositional phrases in a complicated system of aspectual constructions, for instance:

        Tá sé ag snámh     [ta: s'e: isna:v]
        is he at to-swim
        "He is swimming"

Nominal objects of verbal nouns are in the genitive, not accusative:

        Tá sé ag ithe   aráin       [ta: s'e: g'ih'i @ra:n']
        is he at to-eat of-bread
        "He is eating bread"

But unlike other nouns, they can have objects in absolute usage connected to them by a preposition:

        Tá sé chun arán  a  ithe     [ta: s'e: xun' @ra:n ih'i]
        is he for  bread to to-eat
        "He is going to eat bread"

Prepositions

There is a large system of prepositions with complicated syntax. The prepositions themselves are enclitic; they effect morphophonemic changes on following nominal objects, and many of them undergo their own changes in association with the article. Thus:

bothán	[b@ha:n]	"a shed"
i mbothán	[im@ha:n]	"in a shed"
sa bhothán	[s@ v@ha:n]	"in the shed"

They coalesce with pronominal objects, frequently unpredictably, to form a conjugated system of "prepositional pronouns":

do [d@] "to, for"

dom [dom] "to me, for me"

duit [dit'] "to you, for you"

dó [do:] "to him, for him"

di [d'i] "to her, for her"

Some of these forms (like ann [auN] "in it, in him") have their origin in Indo-European adverbial particles, and not in actual combinations of preposition and pronoun. These forms are fully stressed, and there has been a historical tendency to replace the unstressed preposition with the third person masculine/neuter form. In the case of at least one preposition (roimh [riv'] "before"), this has happened more than once in succession.

Irish makes extensive idiomatic use of prepositions, often with modal meanings such as possession, ownership, desire, ability, possibility, likelihood, opinion, and so forth. It even goes so far as to construct entire clauses around them with no verb at all:

        tar éis teacht   dó        [t'r'e:s' t'æxt do:]
        after   to-come  for-him
        "after he came, after he comes"

Phonemes

Irish has a large catalogue of phonemes. The vowel system is fairly standard, with vowels occurring in five basic positions in short and long variants. There is also an neutral unstressed vowel whose realisation is phonetically conditioned. There are five diphthongs, although southern dialects maintain only four.

The system of consonants is structured along three axes. The normal European contrast of voiced-unvoiced remains in place. All consonants come in palatalised and labio-velarised pairs:

Labio-velarised Palatalised

bó [bo:] "cow" vs. beo [b'o:] "alive"

cairt [cær't'] "cart, car" vs. ceart [c'ær't'] "right, correct"

ag dó [ido:] "burning" vs. go deo [g@d'o:] "forever"

This contrast of palatalisation conditions allophones in some vowels.

Labio-velarised Palatalised

as [as] "out of" vs. ais [æs'] "back, returning"

at [at] "swelling" vs. ait [æt'] "strange"

uan [u:@n] "a lamb" vs. uain [u:en'] "lambs"

fial [f'i:@l] "generous" vs. riail [ri:el'] "rule"

Most consonants also have lenited counterparts, appearing at the beginnings of words only in certain grammaticalised contexts. Northern dialects have maintained this contrast in liquids as well as stops:

Radical Lenited

bó [bo:] "cow" vs. an bhó [@vo:] "the cow"

cat [cat] "cat" vs. a chat [@xat] "his cat"

te [t'e] "hot" vs. ró-the [ro:h'e] "too hot"

ní [N'i:] "a thing" vs. (do-)ní [d@n'i:] "does"

Initial Mutations

As exemplified in the above table of lenited consonants, there are extensive morphophonemic changes at the beginnings of words, called "initial mutations", whereby radical consonants are replaced with their lenited counterparts, or nasalised ones, or voiced ones. There are also initial mutations that prefix h- or t- to vowels or t- to initial s-.

Mutation	Radical				Mutated
Lenition	bó	[bo:]	"cow"	vs.	an bhó	[@vo:]	"the cow"
Eclipsis	bosca	[bosk@]	"a box"	vs.	i mbosca	[imosk@]	"in a box"
Eclipsis	áit	[a:t']	"a place"	vs.	i n-áit	[ina:t']	"in a place"
Initial h-	athair	[æh'ir']	"father"	vs.	a hathair	[@hæh'ir']	"her father"
Initial t-to vowel	úll	[u:l]	"an apple"	vs.	an t-úll	[@tu:l]	"the apple"
Initial t- to s-	súil	[su:l']	"an eye"	vs.	an tsúil	[@tu:l']	"the eye"

These initial mutations are characteristic of all surviving Celtic languages, and represent a significant stumbling block for learners. The different languages use different orthographic systems to represent them; in Irish, the radical consonant is always present in writing, although not in speech. In Welsh, by contrast, the radical consonant is replaced by the mutated one in writing as in speech.