What particles do

Most words in categorial grammar are functions. In English, a transitive verb such as “eats” is a function that takes two NP arguments and gives you a clause, S, back. The notation for this is (S/NP)\NP. (Aside: This is rather like defining a function in a programming language, except that void isn’t a type.)

What does this functional approach tell us about particles like?a and?chan? To answer this I’ll need to set out the different sort of clauses I’ve seen in Scottish Gaelic. The notation here is based on CCGbank, which itself is based on that of the Penn Treebank, and I’ve marked new ones as such.

  • S[adj]: predicative adjective. Example: snog in?Tha i snog.
  • S[dcl]: ordinary declarative sentence.?Tha i snog.
  • S[q]: polar question.?A bheil i snog?
  • (new) S[neg]: negative question.?Chan eil i snog.
  • (new) S[negq]: negative polar question.?Nach eil i snog?
  • S[wh]: wh-question:?Ciamar a tha thu?
  • (new) S[n]: verbal noun-headed small clause.?iarraidh cofaidh?in?Tha mi ag iarraidh cofaidh.
  • S[em]: embedded declarative.?a tha thu in?Ciamar a tha thu?
  • (new) S[dep]: dependent verb-headed clause.?bheil i snog in?A bheil i snog?
  • (new) S[a]:?a-infinitive.?a bhith a’ dannsadh

The five new ones need some explanation. S[neg] and S[negq] are motivated by the clear fourfold division of ordinary sentences into positive, interrogative, negative and interrogative negative. S[n], relating as it does to a verbal noun, replaces S[ed], S[pss] and S[ng] in the CCGbank scheme for English. S[a] is somewhat like?S[to] in the CCGbank scheme but not exactly the same as it contains a verbal noun somewhere, and lastly S[dep] presents a phenomenon we simply don’t get in English.

So what do particles do here? Let’s take a few examples from last week’s An Litir Bheag:

Cha|S[neg]/S[dep]
robh|S[dep]/NP/S[adj]
an|NP/N
riaghaltas|N
toilichte|S[adj]
.|.

Here cha is a function mapping a dependent clause to a negative sentence.

Ach|S[dcl]/S[dcl]
tha|S[dcl]/NP/PP
D?mhnall|NP/NP
MacRath|NP
air|PP/S[n]
a|NP
chuimhneachadh|S[n]\NP
ann|PP/NP
an|NP/NP
Le?dhas|NP
fhathast|S[dcl]\S[dcl]
,|,
agus|conj
gu|(S[dcl]\S[dcl])/S[adj]
dearbh|S[adj]
air|PP/NP
feadh|NP
na|(NP\NP)/(N\N)
G?idhealtachd|N\N
,|,
airson|PP/NP
na|NP/S[dcl]
rinn|S[dcl]/NP
e|NP
?s|PP/NP
leth|NP
nan|(NP\NP)/(N\N)
daoine|N\N
.|.

There is a lot going on there. I’ve thought of adverbs as taking a sentence in and giving you a sentence back. Hence gu when it serves to make an adverb out of an adjective, takes S[adj] as its argument and gives you a function that takes a S[dcl] and gives you back S[dcl]. na, as in “that which”, is a function that takes a S[dcl] and gives you a NP back. I’m using shorthands for conjunctions and PPs, but these are both described in the literature.

Potential point for discussion: I’ve treated ag,?a’,?air,?gu and?ri when they introduce verbal nouns as PP/S[n]. But maybe they should be a clause type of their own. Needs more thought.

What the meaning of “is” is

This is the Scottish Gaelic?is, often pronounced and written ‘s, not the English “is”. It’s a copula, and you can say things like Is mise C?ilean, or ‘S math sin, but usually the constructions are more complicated than that and those two examples are

We have the clefted construction Is + e + NP + (for example) a tha?+ PP[ann] to equate the NP and the innards of the PP, where?e is pretty much an expletive like a lot of uses of “it” and “there” in English.

There are “quirky” constructions where the object looks like a subject, and the subject is expressed with a PP.?Is toil leam biadh innseanach?and? Is toil leam a bhith a’ dannsadhare examples, where it is I that like Indian food and I like dancing. (Examples from?Teach Yourself Gaelic, 2nd edn). My list so far of the words that can go in the?toil slot, and what sort of PP they take, is this:

  • PP[le]: toil (n), toigh (adj), caomh (adj), fh?arr (adj), mhath (adj)
  • PP[air]: beag (adj), lugha (adj)
  • PP[do]: fhiach (adj), urrainn (n), ch?ir (n), aithne (n), ?bhaist (n), mhiann (n)

I expect there are more! To the best of my (admittedly very limited) knowledge, a difference between Scottish and Irish Gaelic is that Irish Gaelic only takes adjectives in the?toil slot. They are a bit various in what sort of clausal complements they take, which is a matter for another blog posting.

The other important construction with is is where it’s followed by?ann in order to emphasize something that doesn’t normally go in that position, a bit like?? in Chinese. This is very often a PP, for example from here: ‘s ann ?s an Fhraing is Ameireagaidh a tha ise “It is from France and America she is from”. I think?ann here is really the fused PP for ann + e.

In summary:

  • Is + NP + NP (rare)
  • Is + ADJ + NP (also rare)
  • Is +?N[toil]/ADJ[toil] + PP + SUBJ
  • Is + e + a BI?+ PP[ann]
  • Is + ann?+ PP/ADJ/ADV/NP[temporal] + a BI?+ PP[ann]

Have I missed any?

Hope, expectation, responsibility

Even though?bi?is the verb for “to be”, you can’t usually use it with two noun phrases, certainly not to say that one of them is the order. But there is a class of nouns that go quite happily with another noun as arguments of bi. I think what might be going on is that they’re being used adverbially, like an diugh (today) or an l?thair (present).?Let’s take this phrase from the Scotsman (source) a few years ago (slightly edited because Johnston Press have mislaid their diacritics):

Thuirt am Ministear a tha an urra ris a’ Gh?idhlig, Peter Peacock:

“Said the minister responsible for Gaelic, Peter Peacock:” is what this means. It’s a clefted construction, as is so often the case in Gaelic and Irish.?Tha am Ministear an urra ris a’ Gh?idhlig?”The minister is responsible for Gaelic” would be the unclefted version.

Another example from the same piece:

Tha mi an d?chas gum bi duine l?idir ann a sheasas suas riutha, a sheasas airson na G?idhlig, airson nan G?idheal ‘s an aghaidh an riaghaltais ma tha sin a dh?th.

“I hope that there will be strong people who will stand up for them, stand for Gaelic, for the Gaels and against the government if need be.” This is unclefted and clearer than the previous sentence. At the very beginning we have?tha,?mi, and?an d?chas gu… as the verb and two noun phrases.

And one from the BBC:

Chuir ministear eile aig Eaglais na h-Alba fios chun na h-eaglaise gu bheil e an d?il f?gail air sg?th c?is nam ministearan g?idh.

“Another minister in the Church of Scotland has sent word to the church that he expects to leave on account of the matter of gay clergy.” Here we have bheil, the dependent form of?bi, followed by?e, “he” and an d?il f?gail, “the expectation to leave”.

So that means that?bi fits the following patterns (out of my head and double-checked with William Lamb’s?Scottish Gaelic):

  1. bi + NP + PP:?for expressing locations, for possession, for many verbal constructions if we take?ag/a’?and friends to be prepositions (otherwise?there is a 1b:?bi + NP + AspP), and for linking two nouns:?tha mi nam oileanach and ‘s e oileanach a th’annam
  2. bi + NP + ADJ: tha sinn toilichte, tha i br?agha and so on
  3. bi + NP + ADV[loc]: tha an cat a-staigh
  4. bi + NP + NP[d?chas]: the examples we’ve seen above and a few more. Wilson McLeod on Twitter has helpfully pointed out that d?il and?urra (as shown above),?eisimeil and crochadh?are in this set of nouns.

I wonder whether there are any more? I will keep looking.