Talk:Old Irish grammar

does the nom, voc of gobae trigger h-provection ? Wiktionary says not. CecilWard (talk) 00:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

“Single verb as a sentence”
Regarding the A single verb can stand as an entire sentence claim and the citation needed reason: "This is misleading. A 'single verb' cannot stand as an entire sentence as described. Not only are the emphatic suffixes, -sa and -se, different words from the verb, but the implication is that infixed pronouns, preverbs, conjunct particles, etc. are all just verbal morphology rather than discrete words which form part of the verbal complex. This is a very unorthodox interpretation of the verbal system." Perhaps it would be better to rephrase it in terms of “a (word-like?) single-stress unit around the verb can form a full sentence encompassing an interrogative particle, negation, a subject, and a direct object, (…)” or something like that, to avoid the problem of defining what a “single verb” and a “word” is. In phrases like in fer, mo ben, is carae there is also only one stress but most people would agree that the article in(d), the possessive mo, and the copula is are words, even though they’re proclitics.

Or maybe just state that “The so-called Old Irish verbal complex carries only one stressed syllable and can contain ⟨list of elements⟩”?

Also, a graph like the one recently posted by David Stifter on Twitter showing possible components of the verbal complex would be a nice illustration (maybe worth asking Stifter if he’d release it on a CC license?) Silmethule (talk) 17:52, 21 July 2022 (UTC)