Difference between revisions of "Articles"

Revision as of 22:20, 18 April 2009

Article is a common name for what linguists typically call determiners. In English 'the' and 'a/an' are articles. In Gaelic the indefinite article is silent (e.g. leabhar 'a book') -- the exception being the indefinite genitive, where there is no overt article, but the noun is lenited (Lamb 2003: 29). The definite article surfaces variously as an, am, a', nam, nan or na depending upon the case, gender, and number of the noun it modifies and depending upon which Consonant the following word begins with.

Throughout the following symbols indicate initial mutations and are not traditionally written out ^L means "triggers lenition", Articles ending in -n or -m often trigger voicing of the following consonant through nasalizaiton, although this is not indicated in writing.

The system is complex, so we give three different descriptions. Choose the one that suits you best.

Description 1: By gender and number

Masculine Singular Article

Feminine Singular Article

Plural Article

Description 2: By form of the article

Description 3: An Abstract Analysis

The following description is based on the insightful description found at [[1]]. The symbols in the next chart are abstract! You need to translate them using the guides that follow.

Each of these abstract forms is realized the following ways, predictable from the phonology:

W