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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!)

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Iversen
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 Message 3521 of 3959
09 February 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged 
I have shamefully neglected my Irish studies in January, but to compensate for this I spent most of yesterday evening on Harry Potter and his exploits in Irish. I did retranslations and simple copying and then retranslations again until I went totally green in my brain - and then I came to wonder once again about the way Irish treats relative comstructions.

As Mr. Congáil states there are direct and indirect relative clauses, and "A direct relative clause occurs when the noun at the beginning of the sentence (=the antecedent) is the subject of the verb in the following relative clause". OK, and then it is indirect in all other cases. There are some special cases with temporal words pronouns and interrogative particles, and one bright green day I'll sit down and write a green sheet summarizing all this stuff, and I hope I can do it in just one page (under the assumption that I have a grammar to refer back to for details). However to do this it may be necessary to analyse the rules in the grammar book and look for possible patterns. Let's have a look at the rules:

There is a direct relative particle "a" which is used with all verbs and a tenses in the relative clause, and with some exception it lenites whatever comes after it. There is however also an indirect relative particle "a" which is used in all tenses except pres.subj. and imp(erative) with all verbs except the past tense of all regular verbs and the irregular verbs beir, clois/cluin, ith, tabhair, tar (leaving out the remaining irregular verbs, where it apparently also is used in the past tense - these verbs are not listed at this place in the grammar, you have to know then beforehand). The funny thing is that this guy eclipses and takes the dependent form of verbs that have one. But it has a partner "ar" for use in the past tense of the verbs mentioned above (regular verbs and those listed), and this particle lenites (and takes the dependent form of verbs that have one). I strongly suspect that the "-r" is the last rest of a particle that lenited things. I still dunno what you do with present subjunctive (imperatives in relative clauses may be disregarded).

But these forms are the ones used in positive sentences. In negative sentences there is a partnership even in the direct relative constructions: "Nach" and "nár" - and guess what, they have exactly the same division of labor as "a" and "ar" in the indirect positive constructions: "nach" with all tenses except pres.subj. and 'impv.' of all verbs and not in the past tense of regular verbs and the ones listed above. "Nach" lenites, "nar" also, though not with past passives of regular verbs or "tabhair".

With indirect relative clauses you use the same particles, but here "nach" eclipses and "nár" lenites except past passives of regulars and "tabhair". I hope you have the same hunch as me, namely that this could and should be put into a table, where regular verbs except in their past tenses and the irregular verbs on the list in all tenses function as one group, and past tenses of regular verbs and the remaining irregular verbs function as another. And then I still don't know what to do with present subjunctives - so let's leave them aside for the time being.

The book claims that there aren't any relative particles for any form of the copula. Well, have a look at the forms of the copula in direct relative clauses: present/future affirmative: "is", negative "nach" (!). Past tense/ conditional: affirmative "ba" (or "ab"), negative "nár(bh)". I suppose the similarity of these forms with the particles is totally fortuituous then?

But the story doesn't stop there:

There are conjunctions and verbal particles like the interrogative "an" (= methinks, Latin "num") which is used with all regular verbs and guess-which-verbs except in the past tense - and by inference also with the past tense of the remaining irrregular verbs. Its partner is "ar", which ... well, you can guess the rest or read it in the grammar. If you come to the result that it is used in the past tense of regular verbs and the aforementioned irregulars and that it lenites, then you are onto something - have a cookie. And there are other pairs like "go" / "gur", "ní" / "níor", "cha" /"char", "mura" / "murar" etc. I'm not going to go into details with these particles, but suffice to say that they follow the same pattern. And this includes the closely-knit group of irregular verbs. All this look like there is a potential for some systematization, and it shoukd be possible to make a simple summary of the forms and rules fit into one green page.

Let's leave the topic with an authentic twofold example from Potter I (p.67):

"Níl aon draíodóir a chuigh an tslí chontráilte riamh nach raibh i Slytherin."
(Not-was one sorcerer that take the road wrong ever that-not be in Slytherin.)

And no, I couldn't have written this rant in Irish. Yet.


Edited by Iversen on 09 February 2014 at 9:20pm

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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 3522 of 3959
10 February 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged 
Just in case you haven't seen the copula overview:
http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/kopul3.htm#Übersicht
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 Message 3523 of 3959
10 February 2014 at 8:57am | IP Logged 
Iversen, any thoughts on what happened at the Copenhagen Zoo recently? I think the most surprising thing to me is that they did the autopsy and the feeding in front of the public and then didn't expect any backlash.

Edited by newyorkeric on 10 February 2014 at 8:58am

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Iversen
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 Message 3524 of 3959
10 February 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged 
If you refer to the thing about the public execution of a giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo, then it is troubling that the management of the zoo had so little foresight that it thought nobody would raise an eyebrow. The decision to kill Marius was probably taken by a species coordinator from another zoo (that would be normal practice), but it was handled in a clumsy way by the local management.

Take a parallel case: another Danish zoo had three healthy bear cubs, and even though it searched all over the world for another zoo which would receive them it couldn't find one (and zoos don't sell or give animals to private collectors). So they had to go, and as far as I know everybody accepted this as a sad, but necessary decision. But the execution of Marius came out of the blue and it was filmed and publicized in the media in a way which was predestined to anger a lot of animal friends. Even if there were good reasons for killing precisely this giraffe and feeding it to the lions it was done in a way that suggests that certain zoo people have very limited psychological skills.

Edited by Iversen on 10 February 2014 at 3:19pm

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Iversen
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 Message 3525 of 3959
10 February 2014 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Just in case you haven't seen the copula overview:
http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/kopul3.htm#Übersicht


I have recently written that Nualeargais is my preferred Irish grammmar, and I would really like to have it on paper. The forms quoted by Nualeargais are however by and large the same as in the grammar I studied yesterday, and to me the particles are alive and kicking even with a copula. The section in Nualeargais about conjunctions is very large, but I'm slightly surprised to not to see the distinction between some irregular verbs that have certain forms of the particles (those in -r) with the past tense and others that don't in that long article. So now I don't know what to believe, but so far I tend to accept that there is such a distinction - at least until I have made my own little collection of test cases.

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Iversen
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 Message 3526 of 3959
11 February 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged 
One evening spent on partly on texts, partly on worldlists. In Russian I read the rest of Wikipedia's article about Alexander Porfyrevitch Borodin, and I'm now ready to proceed to Milij Aleksejevitch Balakirev, and after that it'll be Modest Petrovitch Mussorgskij. In Indonesian I have read/studied the first part of an article about the Sailendra family...

BA I: Aku sekarang tahu teori tentang asal-usulnya keluarga Sailendra, dan saya juga tahu bahwa itu melarikan diri ke Jawa sebagai Dapunta Hyang tiba di Palembu dengan bala tentaranya pada tahun 683 masehi (= era kristen) - tapi saya tidak tahu apa mengapa keluarga ini adalah terkenal. Ketenaran belum menyebar ke Denmark.

I have made wordlists from Icelandic and Romanian dictionaries - and in Romanian I deliberately chose pages with many autochthonous words because that's where my weak point is. OK, another weak point is avoiding false friends - I actually have a recent case.

RO: Am lucrat târziu acum două zile și a sosit femeia de ingrijire de la slujba mea, care este română. Eu am zis "godaften", - din păcate am folosit un verb inextent *"a ariva" în loc de "a sosi" când înapoi am vrut (la cerere) să descrie când se spune "godaften" ("bună seara") în daneză. Se poate spune "godaften" la o persoană care vine sau cu care se întilnește în timp ce ambele sunt în mișcare sau dacă tu vini și ceealtă persoană a fost deja acolo - dar nu se poate spune la o persoană care rămân la o anumită locație dacă dacă te duci TU drumul tau. În contrast, nu se poate să zică "godnat" ("noapte bună") în aceeași situație (tu venind) câteva ore mai târziu - afară în cazul unde se întoarce la ușă și se pleacă din nou. Este un pic complicat.


Edited by Iversen on 12 February 2014 at 12:52pm

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tarvos
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 Message 3527 of 3959
11 February 2014 at 11:02pm | IP Logged 
Vreau să mai ajut că nu spunem bună noapta în română - dar, întotdeauna, ”noapte bună”.
Vă precizez pentru că acest cuvânt a fost primul pentru mine când începeam să învăț
română acum cinci de ani.

Noapte bună, mă duc la culc.
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Iversen
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 Message 3528 of 3959
11 February 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
"bună seara", dar "noapte bună" ... limba română este tot așa un pic complicat!


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