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Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English

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Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Contrastive linguistics, prospects and problems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1984, 187-203. Towards a contrastive syntax of Irish and English Raymond Hickey Bonn University In contrasting the syntax of two languages which are typologically as far removed from each other as are Irish and English one is presented with an abundance conflicting structures. The purpose of the study, of which this article is a preliminary stage, is to classify these differing structures and also to investigate the question of interference forms, however, and in many of the cases illustrated below adoption to the varying structures occurs without the hampering effect of transfer of native language structures. In the case of this particular study the contrast to be made is non-directional, assessing what transfer forms can be registered in Irish on the part of native speakers of English while also viewing the attested interference forms from Irish in Hiberno-English which have lead to its deviation from Standard English. The question of the tertium comparationis arises when comparing structures of both languages which are suspected of being semantically equivalent.1 Here the decision procedure used avails primarily of the institution of the investigator. Thus with a pair of sentences such as the following (1) Bhí sé ar an dara fear a tháinig isteach. [was he on the second man who came in]2 (2) He was the second man who came in. a (partially) bilingual speaker can assert their semantic equivalence, a point at which he is unlikely to be contradicted. In accordance with the model-free basis of investigation which I have chosen, I will not claim that the deep structure of both sentences is the same (though I am sure this is the case) and then maintain that its realization is different in both languages due to the varying possibilities of lexico-morphemic combination of each language but simply claim their equivalence on intuitive grounds.3 As the differences between Irish and English lie first and foremost in the realm of surface structure it seems to me to be most fruitful to consider the syntactic realizations (although this serves the purpose of illustration) but need to be abstracted so that one can see them in terms of various combinations of syntactic units which conflict with each other when considered from the stand point of the opposing language, but which each serve the purpose of representing a distinct semantic complex common to both languages. In contrasting the structures of English and Irish there are some which are different to those of English and which have within them a unit or units which form part of a relatively large paradigm. In this paper when dealing with structures I will opt on the grounds of concision for illustrating the particular structure with a single example. A case in point here would be the following sentence: (3) Tá fúm dul amárach. [is under-me go tomorrow] ‘I intend going tomorrow.’ Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 2 of 15 In each of the many possible cases of such constructions we have the defective existential verb tá followed by a form of one of the many prepositional pronouns and verbal noun. The construction can be abstracted as follows: V (tá) + PREPRO + VN This presents the structure minimally: it maybe varied by the paradigmatic elements of PREPRO and expanded by, for example, the addition of adverbials or other complements. The sections found below each deal with a particular area of the syntax of Irish and English where divergences are to be encountered. They represent a selection of such areas only, contain single examples as a rule and do not deal with detail of lexical realization. 1 Word order in Irish Apart from the most obvious fact of Irish being a VSO language as opposed to the SVO character of English5 there are many further instances where Irish shows a word order which deviates from English. Variation of word order within Irish itself is greater that in English due to the increased degree of morphological marking. This allows fronting when emphasis is required. The first element of Irish word order to be treated, however, is that which obtains in neutral statement sentences. 1.1 Positional variations with verb compliments In positioning a direct object in Irish usually requires that this be placed after the subject and before further complements. The subject must be placed immediately after the verb so that it is recognized as fulfilling the function of subject: (4) Chonaic mé Seán. [saw I John] ‘I saw John.’ In the eventuality of further complements these are then added at the end: (4) a. Chonaic mé Seán ag an stáisiún inné. [saw I John at the station yesterday] ‘I saw John at the station yesterday.’ The direct object in (4a) can be replaced by a personal pronoun in which case, however, a displacement to a position after the adverbials occurs:6 (4) b. Chonaic mé ag an stáisiún inné é. [saw I at the station yesterday him] ‘I saw him at the station yesterday.’ Such a displacement rule is unknown in English and is often not observe among Irish learners which has led together with the influence of English syntax on Irish speakers to a weakening of this rule so that when viewed in terms of the binary distinction, correct or incorrect, its is possible to allow the English complement sequence. Thus a Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 3 of 15 necessity of Irish syntax is reduced to a collocation with diminishing frequency in its favour due to undermining from the syntax of English.7 When the direct object is a proper or common noun then displacement to the end of then sentence is not possible: (4) c. *Chonaic mé ag an stáisiún inné Seán. ‘I saw John at the station yesterday.’ *Chonaic mé ag an stáisiún inné an gluaisteán. ‘I saw the car at the station yesterday.’ 1.2 Rhematic fronting Closely related to this displacement is fronting which can be undertaken in Irish for the purpose of rhematic emphasis. Let us take a rhematically neutral sentence such as (5) Chonaic sé an cailín a bhuaigh an duais inniu. [saw he the girl who won the prize today] ‘He saw the girl who won the prize today.’ Should it be required to emphasize, say, the direct object then this can be done as follows: (5) a. An cailín a bhuaigh an duais chonaic sé inniu í. [the girl who won the prize saw he today her] The complex direct object can always be placed at the end of the sentence thus giving a structure which in contrast to (5a) is allowed in English: (5) b. Chonaic sé inniu an cailín a bhuaigh an duais. (5) c. He saw her today, the girl who won the prize. Common to both Irish and English is the restriction that only a complex direct object, that is one consisting of a noun with a correlating relative clause, can be removed from the sentence framework. Again in both languages the space let by the extracted object must be filled by a personal pronoun. Thus the following sentence is unacceptable. (5) d. *An cailín a bhuaigh an duais chonaic sé inniu. Irish goes a step further in allowing fronting of elements qualified by the subject. A case in point is afforded by the extraction of a genitive attribute from its normal position after its determiner: (6) Tá mac an mná a labhair leat marbh. [is son of-the woman who talked with-you dead] ‘The son of the woman who talked with you is dead.’ (6) a. An bhean a labhair leat tá a mac marbh. [the woman who talked with-you is her son dead] Fronting of this kind is not possible in English as the element in the genitive has a correlating relative clause and so cannot precede its qualifier: Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 4 of 15 (6) b. *The woman who spoke to you’s son is dead.8 When it is a case of the subject itself being fronted then the pattern given above whereby the place of a functional element in the sentence framework must be occupied can also be used: (7) An bheirt atá anseo anois bíonn siad anseo gach bliain. [the two woman who-are here now are they here every year] ‘The two women who are here now are here every year.’ Were it not for siad in (7) it would have the same word order as its English semantic equivalent; its presence, however, shows that the essential VSO order of Irish is maintained and furthermore that (7) is a case of rhematic fronting. 2 Unilateral syntactic ambiguity The constructions to be considered under this rubric are those which are only ambiguous from the point of view of one of the language being considered, so that here we have more than one equivalent each of which is semantically different. In almost all cases of equivalence we can offer more than one construction on either side which reflects accurately the meaning of the original construction. This depends on our definition of equivalence. The cases here are such that a particular distinction is not made which is necessary for a single interpretation of the construction involved. Consider the following: (8) An buachaill ar leis an rothar. [the boy which-is/was with-him the bicycle] Due to the dependent form of the copula ar which does not, in this case, formally distinguish between present and past (8) has the following interpretations: (8) a.
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