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. The boy who owns the bicycle. (8) b. The boy who owned the bicycle.
The same applies when a dependent form of the copula introduces a relative clause which follows on a verb as in
(9) Dúirt sé gur náireach an rud é. [said he that-is/was shameful the thing it] which because there is no necessity to correlate chronologically the tenses of the main and subordinate clauses allows of two interpretations:
(9) a. He said that it was a shameful matter. (9) b. He said it is a shameful matter.
The ambiguity of both (8) and (9), however, is due to a constraint in the morphonemics of Irish which does not allow the mutation of liquids. Should the elements after ar and gur in (8) and (9) respectively be either vocalic or a lenitable consonant then the ambiguity is resolved, as a distinction is then made between past and present. Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 5 of 15
Consider the following sentences.
(8) c. An buachaill arb uaidh [@rqb w@i] an rothar [the boy which-is from-him the bicycle] ‘The boy who wants the bicycle.’
(8) d. An buachaill arbh uaidh [[@rqv w@i] an rothar [the boy which-was from-him the bicycle] ‘The boy who wanted the bicycle.’
(9) c. Dúirt sé gur mór [gqr mo:r] an trua é. [said he that-is great the pity it] ‘He said that it is a great pity.’
(9)d. Dúirt sé gur mhór [gqr wo:r] an trua é. [said he that-is great the pity it] ‘He said that it was a great pity.’
While (9d) id no longer ambiguous with regard to the present indicative it nonetheless remains so with regard to mood so that it can also be interpreted as ‘He said it would be a great pity.’ There are further instances of unilateral syntactical ambiguity which are not so easily resolvable. Such an instance is provided by the lack of pluperfect with the verb tá in Irish which is noticeable when translating from English. Thus the following Irish sentence has two interpretations.
(10) Ní raibh ann ach an gaoth. (10) a. It was only the wind. (10) b. It had only been the wind.
It is nonetheless possible in Irish to express the pluperfect with other verbs which then have a finite form of the verb tá plus past participle.
(10) c. Bhí sé imithe nuair a tháinig a bhean. [was he gone when came his woman] ‘He had gone when his wife came.’
Quite distinct from tense uncertainty (that is in a context free situation) is the ambiguity with regard to agent which also occurs in relative clauses in Irish. Here the relative clause connector a does not indicate sentence function among the units in both main and relative clauses. This is also the case in English (if we choose not to make the distinction between who and whom) but it is not critical as the word order in the relative clause indicates the function of the sentence elements. Compare
(11) Sin é an fear a mhol an sagart. [that it the man who praised the priest] with its two possible equivalents
(11) a. This is the man who praised the priest. (11) b. This is the man who the priest praised.9 Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 6 of 15
The word order of the relative clause in Irish is fixed though there is the possibility of disambiguizing (11) by substituting ar for a thus obtaining the meaning of (11b). Should (11) be negated then it is no longer possible to disambiguize it and so (11c) has the negated meanings of both (11a) and (11b):
(11) c. Sin é an fear nár mhol an sagart. [that is the man who-not praised the priest]
3 Unilateral alternative syntagmas
By alternative is meant here that two or more syntagmas can express the same semantic content and that both do not stand in the relationship of paraphrase to one another. Such syntagmas exist in both English and Irish for which the following may serve as examples:
(12) An obair atá sibh a dhéanamh agaibh [the work which-is you do]10
(12) a. An obair atá á dhéanamh agaibh [the work which-is do at-you]
(12) b. The work which you (pl.) are doing
Strictly speaking we have here a case of bilateral alternative syntagmas as (12b) also exists as a sentence without which. However, I choose here not to regard those syntagmas as true alternatives of which one is merely a reduced version of the other. Neither do I regard as such those sentences which contain the same elements but in positional variations. As alternative syntagmas in English we can offer the two translations of the following Irish sentence:
(13) An obair atáthar a dhéanamh [the work which-#-are11 do]
(13) a. The work which is being done (13) b. The work which they are doing
4 Passive equivalence in Irish
The above sentences lead to another area of syntax where Irish and English usage diverge. The English passive has no formal equivalent in Irish. I stress formal as there are a variety of means by which one can convey the notion of passivity in Irish. Thus if one begins with a sentence such as
(14) It is said that there is only a poor chance of it.
(where the passive can also be replaced by a finite verb with indefinite agent they say that….) one can most appropriately render this in Irish by using the autonomous form (the term used traditionally in Irish grammars). This is a finite verb form which is not Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 7 of 15 subject-marked. Thus the translation of (14) is:
(14) a. Deirtear nach bhfuil ach droch-sheans ann. [#-say not is (dependent form) but had-chance in-it]
In those cases where, in English, it is not required or desired to mention the agent this form is the most convenient Irish equivalent:
(15) Rinneadh an obair. [#-did the work]
(15) a. The work was done.
Should it be desirable to mention the agent then a subject-marked verb form can be used:
(15) b. Rinne mé an obair. [did I the work]
It is possible to express the agent while using the autonomous form. It then appears in the form of a prepositional pronoun as in the sentence:
(16) Rugadh mac di. [#-bore son for-her] ‘She gave birth to a son.’
A further approximate equivalent to the passive (with or without specified agent) is offered by the perfective past of Irish:
(17) The work has been done (by me).
(17) a. Tá an obair déanta (agam). [is the work done (at-me)]
Note the specifically Hiberno-English rendering of (17a) which characteristically has the past participle after the direct object:
(17) b. I have the work done.
Equally common in this connection is a copula form with a relative clause which affords the degree of emphasis which is usually implied in English passive sentences with specified agent:
(18) Is12 mise a rinne an obair. [is myself who did the work]
(18) a. The work was done by me.
5 Concatenative verbs
There are very definite differences in the area of verbal concatenation between Irish Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 8 of 15 and English which arise out of the dissimilarity of non-finite verb forms in both languages. In English a concatenated verb can assume one of three forms:
Infinitive with to : INF+ Infinitive without to : INF- Present participle : PART as in the sentences
(19) He was told to leave. (20) She must stay. (21) They considered emigrating.
In Irish the non-finite forms in (19)-(21) are all rendered by the verbal noun, a verb form which is marked for neither person or number and is used, among other situations, in that of verb concatenantion:
(19) a. Dúradh leis imeacht. [#-said with-him go]
(20) a. Caithfidh sí fanacht. [must she wait]
(21) b. Smaoinigh siad dul thar sáile.13 [thought they go over sea]
Although Irish has only one non-finite verb form in such constructions it has three possible syntagmas with this depending on whether there is (i) single concentration (above); (ii) double concatenation (22) or (iii) concatenation with a verb complement (23).
(22) Smaoinigh siad dul ag snámh. [thought they go swimming] ‘They thought of going swimming.’
(23) Theip orm an bád a dhíol. [failed on-me the boat its selling] ‘I failed to sell the boat.’
In those cases where a noun is used instead of the present participle in English the bare verbal noun is used again, this being the equivalent of either a gerund or as in (25) of a deverbative nominalization:
(24) We heard them talking.
(24) a. Chualamar iad ag caint. [heard-we them talking]
(25) We heard the talk of the girls.
(25) a. Chualamar caint na gcailíní. [heard-we talk of the girls] Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 9 of 15
6 Prepositional usage
Among the structural difference between Irish and English which lead to interference that of prepositional usage occupies a prominent place. In most cases we have prepositional verbs of English with literal translations of the English prepositions into Irish:
(26) The time is up.
(26) a. *Tá an t-am suas. [is the time up]
(26) b. Tá an t-am istigh. [is the time in ]
But the case of (26b) we have figurative use of istigh which does not exist in English, the equivalent here being up. The overgeneralization of the range of up thus gives rise to (26a). The use of istigh is not confined to this particular phrase but can be used productively to express the notion of completion or pastness, for example in
(26) c. Tá a saol istigh. [is her life in] ‘Her time is up/her day is done.’
6.1 Prepositional pronouns
Even the most cursory account of the differences in syntax between Irish and English could not afford to neglect the significance of prepositional pronouns, synthetic forms of preposition plus pronoun which play such vital role in the system of complements of Irish verbs. The most straightforward use of prepositional pronouns is where they correspond to the prepositional object of an English verb:
(27) Thug sé peann luaidhe dom. [gave he pencil to-me] ‘He gave the pencil to me.’
Frequently the prepositional pronoun occurs where the object in English is non-prepositional:
(28) Ní oireann sé di. [not suits it to-her] ‘It doesn’t suit her.’
Below I offer in tabular form a break-down of the remaining most characteristic uses of prepositional pronouns:
(i) as the equivalent of the English possessive pronoun Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 10 of 15
(29) Cailleadh a mhac air. [#-lost his son on-him] ‘He lost his son.’
(29) a. Briseann sé an croí ionam. [breaks it the heart in-me] ‘It breaks my heart.’
(ii) as directional adverb
(30) Rachaimid ann le chéile. [we-will-go in-it together] ‘We will go there together.’
(iii) as intensifier
(31) D’imigh siad leo. [left they with-them] ‘They left.’
(iv) elliptical use
(32) Cuirfidh mé ceist ar mhamaí. Cuir leat, mar sin. [will-put I question on mother. Put with-you so] ‘I’ll ask mother. Well do that.’
(v) in sentences with the copula
(33) Is beo slán dó. (equation) [is alive healthy to-him] ‘He is alive and well.’
(33) a. Cad is ainm duit? (appellation) [what is name to-you] ‘What is your name?’
(33) b. Carb as di? (origin) [where is-from to-her] ‘Where is she from?’
It is necessary to add that not all of the sixteen or so prepositional pronoun types can be used in each of the above divisions. Many of them contain only one possibility. Finally special mention should be made of double occurrences of prepositional pronouns which are common in Irish to express a semantic relation, frequently that between subject and indirect object of a sentence in English. It is necessary to grasp the applicational possibilities of such double prepositional pronoun constructions as they are an essential trait of Irish syntax. Such semantic relations as expressed by them may also occur in sentences where a prepositional construction is already the equivalent of an English lexicalised verb. Such is the case with the Irish equivalent to the English verb owe:
(34) You owe it to him. Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 11 of 15
(34) a. Tá sé amuigh aige ort. [is it out at-him on-you]
Here the English direct object appears as the subject of the Irish sentence and both the subject and the indirect object in the English original are found in prepositional pronoun form in Irish. The subject sé is part of a paradigm so that we can substitute it by another noun, e.g. fiacha, ‘debts’:
(34) b. Tá fiacha amuigh agam air. [are debts out at-me on-him] ‘He is in my debt.’
7 Polyfunctional morphemes
Among the elements of Irish which present difficulty to the learner are those which can assume more than one function. This is particularly the case when English has monofunctional morphological units in its semantic equivalents so that one is not prepared for the polyfunctionality present in Irish. Consider the following:
(35) Idir fhir agus mhná. ‘Both men and women’
(35) a. Idir meán oíche agus breacadh an lae. ‘Between midnight and the break of day’
The distinction between the two meanings of idir is made morphonemically, the meaning ‘both’ requiring lenition of the initial consonant of the following word and the meaning ‘between’ not doing so.
But by far the most multifunctional element of Irish is the grapheme a which can have at least eight different functions. It is important from a contrastive point of view that the learner recognizes the individual functions and applies them correctly. The following sentences exemplify them:
(i) vocative particle: a dhuine uasail ‘dear sir’
(ii) particle before numerals: a haon, a dó, etc. ‘ one’, ‘two’, etc.
(iii) object of verbal noun: fión a ól ‘to drink wine’
(iv) relative pronoun: an lá a pósadh é ‘the day he was married’ Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 12 of 15
(v) possessive pronoun in the third person14: L: a theach ‘his house’ Ø: a teach ‘her house’ N: a detach ‘their house’
(vi) when concatenating verbs of purpose: Téigh a chodladh ‘go to sleep’ D’éirigh sé a chaint. ‘He rose to speak.’
(vii) a. inclusive general pronoun: Sin a bhfuil agam. ‘That is all that I have.’
b. partitive general pronoun: Sin a bhfuil don scéal agam. ‘That is all I know of the story.’
(viii) adverbialization of abstract nouns: A ghéire a labhair sí. a + sharpness which she spoke ‘How sharply she spoke.’
In addition to this there are a series of cases where a is found petrified expressions, e.g. a chéile ‘each other’. In non of the functions given above is a a source of interference probably as it shows no surface correlation with any morphological elements15 of English semantic equivalents thus not giving rise to negative transfer.
8 Brief characterization of interference types16
It is necessary in a contrastive syntax as is intended here to distinguish various interference types. This also applies of course to the basic distinction between positive and negative transfer. Among negative forms, however, I should like to introduce a further threefold distinction which I shall label as follows:
(i) pattern interference (ii) compensatory interference (iii) negative interference
By (i) I understand those interference forms which represent the transferring of a syntactic form from L1 to L2, where this structure is not permissible. It is important to stress here that it is a matter of structural patterns being transferred without the semantic equivalence being affected. An example of (i) is the use of the definite article in Irish; here this is used with generalised nominals (as in German, for example):
(36) Is í Ghaeilge an teanga is deise. [is she the Irish the language most fine] ‘Irish is the finest language.’ Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 13 of 15
The English equivalent shows no semantic shift but lacks the definite article. The particular structural pattern of Irish shown here is often to be found in Hiberno-English:
(36) a. He finds the Irish hard going.
Essentially different from (i) are both (ii) and (iii) which can be characterized by their effect on the meaning of assumed semantic equivalents. By compensatory interference I mean the attempt on the part of a speaker to express a semantic content for which he can find no ready structure in L2. I deliberately say ‘ready structure’ as all elements of meaning are theoretically expressible in a second language by means of paraphrase. An example can be readily furnished from Hiberno-English where we have a syntactical device for expressing concisely the perfective aspect of Irish, namely the placing of a past participle after a direct object. Hiberno-English maintains the normal word order of Standard English for cases where such an aspect is not intended:
(37) Have you read ‘Ulysses’? (38) Have you ‘Ulysses’ read?
Paraphrases of (37) and (38) are:
(37) a. Did you ever read ‘Ulysses’? (38) a. Have you finished reading ‘Ulysses’?
(37) can then be termed a case of compensatory interference which is preferred to a paraphrastic expansion such as (37a). Indeed an interference form is likely to occur where no given structure (of the same length and of course similar in syntax) in L2 corresponds to one in L1, more likely in fact than the occurrence of a larger structure in L2 which is semantically equivalent to the shorter one in L1. Type (iii), negative interference, is not always recognized for being what it is, namely the neutralization in the non-native use of L2 of a distinction in L2 but is not found in L1. Let me give another example from Hiberno-English, that of clause subordination. Standard English used temporal subjunctors in the introduction of temporal subordinate clauses. Such subjuctors are not usually used in Irish as the context expresses the notion of temporal subjunction and /or causality if required. In each case the structure is that of the additive clause whereby a subordinate clause is introduced by agus (and). Consider the following sentences:
(39) Bhuail mé leis agus é ag teacht aníos an bothar. [hit me with-him and he coming up the road]
(40) Chuaigh mé amach agus é ag cur báistí. [went I out and it putting rain]
(39) implies a casual connection between the action of the main clause (‘meeting’) and that of the subordinate clause. This is not so in (0) which merely states the simultaneity of the actions in both clauses. In Irish the notion of causality is implied by the meaning of the clauses and not by specifying this with a causative connector. The Hiberno-English equivalent to (39) and (40) are:
(39) a. I met him and he coming up the road. (40) a. I went out and it raining. Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 14 of 15
The syntactic correlation of the non-specific clause connector and with the non-finite verb forms which correspond to the verbal nouns of the Irish sentences is quite accurate. Here the causal relation implied in (39) is left unspecified in (39a) thus neglecting the temporal-causal connectors while/when which could be used (in (40a) in a purely temporal function). I would like to make a further subdivision in (iii). The cases which I have just discussed are those of specific neglective interference. General neglective interference is a term which could be applied to the non-use of syntactical possibilities present in L2 though not in L1. This gives us a designation for the phenomenon whereby a limited number of the syntactic possibilities of L2 are used. I would assert that neglective and compensatory interference go hand in hand for it is precisely the ignorance of , or unfamiliarity with a large range of syntagmas which leads to one falling back on those of L1 and transferring them into L2 where a certain proportion of them will of necessity not be permissible.
Notes
1. For a definition of the notion of equivalence, see Krzeszowski 1971: 37-48.
2. The second line renders what is intended as a word-for-word translation of the Irish original. This is not entirely satisfactory as in many cases there are elements in Irish which cannot be rendered sufficiently in English.
3. This is after all a procedure employed constantly in contrastive studies irrespective of whether it is explicitly state by the investigator or not.
4. See Carroll 1968: 114f. for a discussion of transfer types.
5. The contention if McCawley 1970: 286-299, that English has a VSO character refers to the predicate-initial nature of clauses in an underlying constituent order and not to surface structure.
6. Under the heading ‘Objektisolierung’ Wigger gives a treatment of this fronting. See Wigger 1972: 264ff.
7. I should add here that I have no reached unanimity on this point: one of my informants maintained that pre-adverbial position of the pronominal object was quite acceptable with particularly long adverbial sequences. It was not possible, however, to determine an exact correlation between sequence length and degree of acceptability. On this subject, see Ahlqvist 1976: 171f.
8. This applies to Standard English only.
9. The use of ‘that’ as relative pronoun is of cause very common perhaps because of the merger of the subject and object forms of the relative pronoun: This is the man that the priest praised.
10. It is difficult to gloss a and á in English. For our purposes here we say that a is the form used before a verbal noun when a pronominal subject is present with its connected finite verb, while á is that used when a prepositional pronoun subject is present. This at least gives the distribution conditions for the two particles in these syntagmas.
11. The zero symbol here refers to the fact that this relative, finite verb form is not subject-marked. Raymond Hickey Towards a Contrastive Syntax of Irish and English Page 15 of 15
12. The copula is is formally a separate verb from the existential verb tá. Its syntagmas differ considerably as well.
13. This sentence is strictly speaking. Smaoinigh siad ar dul thar sáile. but in spoken Irish ar is dropped.
14. The abbreviations L, Ø and N stand for (i) lenition (fricativization of the following consonant), (ii) placing of h before vowels (but no further changes) and (iii) placing of a homorganic nasal or equivalent voiced consonant is the only one pronounced, so that, for example, a dteach, ‘their house’ F [q d"@:x].
15. That is those elements which perform similar functions. Thus we do not have confusion of Irish a with English a.
16. This is by no means intended to be an original treatment of interference typology but merely a set of remarks on the subject which are particularly relevant to the attested interference forms, especially those present in
References
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