Re: Verb-initial languages

Steg Belsky wrote:

 > On Fri, 14 Mar 2003 06:39:17 -0500 John Cowan
 > writes:
 >
 > >Joe scripsit:
 > >
 > >>In Irish,  |tá| is the copula, and it goes first.
 >
 >
 > >My understanding is that the Irish copula is "is", and that "tá"
 > >rather asserts predication.
 > >--
 > >John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
 > >cowan@ccil.org
 >
 > -
 >
 > I'm not sure what "predication" means, but my Irish teacher said that the
 > difference between |is| and |tá| is analogous to (although not exactly
 > the same as) the difference in Spanish between |ser| and |estar|.
 >
 > if i can remember correctly (no textbook or dictionary with me at the
 > moment):
 >
 > Is fear é.  = "he is a man"
 > Tá bean ag an doras.  = "a woman is at the door."

Yep, that's right, but it reminds me of something odd that the book
"Teaching Irish" (by Mícheal Ó'Siadhail) says. I haven't been able to
decide whether it's a peculiarity of the Cois Fharraige dialect the
book teaches (which is, in many respects, odd :) or not. My rather
rusty semi-native [forcibly] internalised Irish parser can't give me a
straight yea or nay. The thing is, that apparantly when the topic is
definite, an extra disjuntive pronoun is required, so

Is fear é = "he is a man"
*Is an fear é  = wrong attempt at "he is the man"
Is é an fear é = "he is the man"

At least, I think that's how it is. The last example is certainly right,
but I prevaricate on the acceptibility of the second example.

s.

----
This post brought to you be the letter 3 and the number 0xF.
Stephen Mulraney... ataltane at ataltane.net... ataltane.net