Preverbal particles (was: Re: R: Italian Particles)

At 3:37 pm -0600 21/4/00, Aidan Grey wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>> At 11:34 am +0100 21/4/00, yl-ruil wrote:
>> >Raymond Brown wrote:
>> [...]
>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> At 9:13 pm +0100 16/4/00, yl-ruil wrote:
>> >> >Out of interest,
>> >> >in the Celtic languages virtually all verbs are prefixed by a particle
>> >but
>> >>
>> >> 'virtually all' seems a bit of a hyperbole IMHO.
>
>    Seems perfectly accurate to me.

Depends, it seems, by what one means by 'virtually all'.  I guess in this
day & age when 'virtual reality' means that it's not real, the phrase is a
tad ambiguous.

>Irish and Scots Gaelic do this,
Yes - but unless the books I have are hopelessly misinformed (a
possibility, I guess), I have not the slightest difficulty in finding
examples of verbs without prefixed particles.  The tendency in all the
modern Celtic-langs is surely to use periphrastic forms using the verb 'to
be'; according to my sources, which may be wrong, neither the Irish 'ta'
nor Scots Gaelic 'tha' have prefixes; nor do I see them before synthetic
present tenses.

>Old irish
>especially so (hence the larger number of irish verbs that begin in t-,
>thanks to
>the preverb do-).
A preverb denoting past time, isn't it?

I've already agreed with yl-ruil that there's certainly a _tendency_
towards use of preverbal particles; to me 'virtually all' seems a bit of a
hyperbolic way to describe this, obviously others disagree.  And, as I
understand it, both he & I are agreed that the so-called "Italian
particles" are a different phenomenon from this Celtic one.

I misunderstood the point he was making because the subject title hadn't
been changed as the thread changed - I've been as guilty as anyone on this
- and I've acknowledged it.

Ray.


Can't we let the matter rest.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================