Re: Genitives NPs as Relative Clauses

Keith Gaughan scripsit:

----- Original Message -----

> In my (English) idiolect, it's not uncommon for me to use genitive
> constructions
> in the place of relative clauses. Example:
>
> My idiolect: ...of my seeing...
> 'Normal English': ...that I see...
>
> It's not something I always use, and I can't predict when I use it but I
do. I
> think there's parallel idioms in Irish, but I can't think of any like it
off
> the top of my head.
Keith, this is definitely a calque from Irish (i.e. Gaeilge) to Irish
English - "da kannst du Gift d'rauf nehmen" as Christophe said - Scottish
Gaelic does exactly the same thing.

"Fear a gaoil" means "the man she loves" but actually translates as "the man
of her love": "fear" "man," "a" "her" (doesn't lenite the next word, which
is why I chose it, to keep things simple) "gaoil" "of love," genitive of
"gaol" "love."

"Fear a faicinn" "the man of her seeing" does sound a little odd - you'd
normally say "am fear a chunnaic i" "the man that she saw" *or* "the man
that saw her" (without an adverb in there you can't distinguish them) - I
think it's more to do with, um... states? Terminology is breaking down here,
what I mean is that "... that she saw" or "... that saw her" is a single
definite action, "that she loves" is sort of ongoing, and internal. Dunno.

Scottish Gaelic at least - and I would assume Irish - is in general much
more noun-oriented than verb-oriented; many many many idioms involve simply
prepositions - e.g. "tha cóig doilearan/miosan agam air," literally "there
are five dollars/months at me on him," less literally "I have five
dollars/months on him," idiomatically "he owes me five dollars" or "I am
five months older than he is," respectively.

Verbs don't have infinitives *per se*, they have "verbal nouns" - which have
gender and decline like nouns, how frightening is *that*? :) To say nothing
of what they call "conjugated prepositions"...

Doug

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