Re: Verb-initial languages

Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...> wrote:

> Steg Belsky wrote:
>
>  > 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"
In some northern dialects, you can use "An fear is é".

'course, this isn't exactly 'standard'... :-)

> 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.
K.

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