Boergstrom, Really Old, like 1950s old

Mutation:

NOUNS

• Lenition of initial consonants: cat- dà chat
• Prefixation of a nasal consonant: cat- an cat; phonemically: /(ə) Nkahd/
• Palatalization of final consonants on root morphemes: an cat – a’ chait, na cait; this is often accompanied by, or even replaced by, vocalic mutation: an ceann- na cinn.

VERBS

• Palatalization of final consonants occurs, but is ‘relatively unimportant’
• Lentition (a & a dh’) is productive in characterizing the relative mode of all tenses

Borgstroem makes the claim that the syntax of the modes of verbs parallels that of the cases of nouns:

• Nominative – independent
  • Can be used without a sentence, ie. as an answer to a question
  • In the sentence the verb comes first and the nom second
• Genitive – relative
  • The genitive noun is always governed by some antecedent
    • A noun
      • Biadh a’ choin
      • The dog’s food
    • A verbal noun governs its object in the genitive
      • Thà a’ bhò ‘g ithe an fheòir
      • The cow is eating the grass
    • A compound preposition:
      • air son, an aghaidh
    • Sometimes a simple preposition
      • fad, bharr
    • The adjective làn
      • Làn fala
      • Full of blood
    • Also, two nouns in genitive case maybe coordinated without repetition of the antecedent
  • The relative verb is always governed by some antecedent
    • a noun
      • Baidh a dh’itheas an cù
      • food that the dog will eat
    • Certain conjunctions
      • 'nuair, mà, mar, agus
    • Interrogatives
      • Cò thuigeas sin?
      • Who can understand that?
    • Topicalized(?)/left dislocated(?) words
      • ‘s ann am maireach a thilleas e
      • ‘it is tomorrow he will return’
• Dative – dependent
  • A noun in the dative is always governed by a preposition
    • Of the 15 prepositions that can be conjugated, all except chun and eadar govern a noun in the dative
    • Unlike in the above cases, when dative nouns are coordinated, there must be a preposition before each one.
  • A verb in the dependent case is always governed by a proclitic particle
    • as in the dative noun case, when dependent verbs are coordinated, the particle must be repeated in each instance

INTERIM SUMMARY

• Nom/indep forms do not presuppose any antecedents
• Gen/rel forms presuppose antecedents which are often nouns or have a certain affinity to nouns; the antecedent need not be repeated in coordinated phrases
• Dat/dep forms presuppose immediately preceding antecedents which are not nouns, adjectives, or verbs.

Where the parallelism breaks down

• NOM nouns can fill-in for other forms in certain contexts
  • After verbal nouns
    • ‘g ithe feur
  • Before another noun in GEN
    • Air cas a’ ghille
  • After the prepositions gun and eadar
• The independent form of the verb, however, never occurs after a governing antecedent

Discussion of morpheme boundaries (Key Points):

• Stressed syllables are with few exceptions, word initial
  • Munster Irish diverges
• Root morphemes are with few exceptions, word initial
• Gaelic may be a “mildly synthetic” language