Old Irish – Morphology, Part 3
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Stifter, David
Introduction to the verbal categories of Old Irish. This lecture deals e.g. with the categories of tense, aspect, mood, and voice.
 Hello, welcome back to our series about old-age morphology. In this session, I will talk about the fundamental categories and dimensions of verbal morphology. The formal inventory of the old-age verbal system is too rich for a comprehensive description. Instead, I can only outline it. The old-age finite verb is multidimensional. That is to say, it encodes in a multitude of grammatical dimensions and formal distinctions at the same time. The distribution of formal markers and the structure of categorical information, however, are very unevenly balanced. For example, in the preterite. Some formations have a separate preterite lending set, and others use the primary endings. But whereas everywhere else in the system primary endings are contrasted with secondary endings, this is not so in the preterite. Or, to cite another example, whereas in simple verbs, relativity is expressed by separate endings that are indifferent to the syntactic role of the relativised item. Compound verbs express relativity through verb-intralling mutations that also encode syntactic information. The semantic or content dimensions of old-age finite verbs are personal number, tense and aspect, mood, voice, relativity and perspectivity, first of all. Person and number have been ignored in this table since they appear in all categories equally. Strictly speaking, object-prenominality should also be included as a dimension of its own, since pronominal objects can only be encoded as infixes or suffixes inside the verbal complex, not outside. But in order not to overload the presentation, this will be discussed in a later session about syntax by my colleague Aaron Griffith. In addition, finite verbs also encode the purely formal dimensions, deponentiality and dependency, both of which possess no semantic content, but only cause the number of possible forms to multiply. I have already introduced the concept of dependency in the previous session about the verbal complex. Because of their redundancy, deponentiality and dependency were eliminated in the course of Irish language history. Perspectivity and object-prenominality are optional dimensions. Marking verbs in these dimensions imparts additional information to an already complete verbal form. Other dimensions are obligatory, which means that a finite verbal form always carries inherently relevant information concerning these dimensions, even if, occasionally, one or more of those categorical oppositions may be neutralized. The category of person and number is fusional. The two dimensions cannot be separated. All finite verbs are obligatorily marked for subject, person and number, which finds morphological expression in the personal endings. All Irish is a pro-drop language. The subject is expressed by the verbal endings alone and never by independent subject pronouns. The usual three persons and the two numbers singular and plural are indicated. There is no unmarked member in this whole dimension, although there is a very, very slight tendency among singular persons to lack formal marking. If I say something about mood, all Irish distinguishes the two universal modalities, realis and irrealis. The realis indicates that something belongs to the known, experienced world, or that at least the speaker believes so. The irrealis speaks of imagined, desired worlds. The realis is grammatically represented by the mood that is split into the three tenses past, present and future. The present is encoded by the morphological category indicative present, which additionally can give expression to events without time reference, i.e. generic action, and to past events, the usage of historical present. Future events must be encoded by the morphological category future. In the past there is also a spectral distinction between a perfective pretorite and an imperfective imperfect. The pretorite denotes actions that were completed in the past, and is frequently used for narrative purposes. The imperfect, on the other hand, encodes repeated or custom reaction in the past. The irrealis is represented by the mood's imperative, subjunctive and conditional. The imperative is the mood for immediate orders. Special imperative forms can be created for all persons in old age, which is quite unusual. This includes the first person singular. The conditional refers to hypothetical events, but it also supplies a future for a past frame of reference. The subjunctive characterizes a verbal action as to some degree removed from factuality. Therefore, its semantic range goes from the expression of wishes over uncertainty to irreality. There are two formal categories of subjunctive, the present subjunctive and the past subjunctive, and the latter of the two is further removed from reality. In complement clauses, finally, the subjunctive serves also as a mere marker of subordination. Voice is a binary dimension, comprising the two categories active and passive. There are special active endings for all persons and numbers. The active voice, on the other hand, is marked with special endings only for the third person, third person singular and third person plural. The third person singular in a passive also serves as an impersonal form, and as such, supplies the passive voice for the first and second persons in constructions with object-prenominal marking. Impersonals can also be formed even of intransitives. The active voice has two possible formal expressions. Every old Irish verb belongs to one category of a purely formal binary opposition, one characterized by active endings, the other by deponent endings, and those of the second type we call components. The term active ending that I use here must not be mistaken with the active voice, because both active and deponent endings are active in voice. The difference is of an entirely redundant formal nature. Deponent verbs are only common among weak verbs. There are very few deponents among strong verb classes. Deponent endings typically resemble their active counterparts with an additional r at the end, so compare the non-deponent cottage they love with the ending idj with the deponent form molygier they praise. Or a pretroid form gaad, I prayed, which is a zero ending, versus manor, I thought, where the r is equivalent to the zero ending of the active non-deponent form. Deponents were gradually eliminated from the language, beginning already in the earliest phase of a tested old Irish. Diachronically, deponents continue verbs with middle inflection, but whereas in Indo-European the middle voice indicated some sort of self-centered verbal action, and thus contrasted functionally with the active, in Irish this has become a completely non-functional, merely lexical property. Old Irish finite verbs appear again in one of two states, so we're back in the binary relationships, namely non-relative and relative. Non-relative is the unmarked member. Relative means that the clause which is headed by the relative verb stands in a subordinate relationship of some sort to another clause. Relativity in Old Irish is marked by an extremely intricate system of morphological, morphophonological, syntactical and pronominal means. It's so complicated that I would at least need one or two additional sessions to talk about it, so I won't even start. Aaron Griffith will say a few things about it in his sessions on syntax. I will just show you one example, a sentence that involves three relative verbal forms, each of a different formal type. The sentence is In ti cháras nech agas for tiad, for kártasída írf ishélvath in díir for tiad. He, whom somebody loves and whom he helps, is then cast into the possession of the man who helps him. The sentence is from the Milan glosses. The three verbal forms, the three relative forms are kártasída, for tiad and for tiad. In kártasída, the first verb, which means whom he loves, it has a special relative ending, and it shows relative lenition, which expresses the object and the seedant here, which is actually a bit unusual for normal grammar. The next verb, for tiad, whom he helps, expresses the same relationship, object relationship, but it has no special ending, and it uses a nasalizing relative construction, so it's for tiad instead of for tiad. Finally, we have for tiad, who helps him. This expresses subject antecedent. The relativity is expressed through the type of the pronoun that is found, the id part here, and through the relative lenition that is found on the pronoun itself. All finite verbs, except for imperatives, can be augmented to change the perspective by which the speaker looks at the verbal action. Typically, a grammatical element, usually the preverb ro, is infixed or prefixed to a given verbal form in order to mark the perspective. But other preverbs or different strategies, such as stem-supplation, are also possible. Perspective augmentation means that a resultative or potential meaning is added to the plain verbal action. So, for instance, we have here asper says versus the augmented form asröver, can say, so the ro adds the potential meaning here, or asper said versus asröver has said, or we have loth, I went, versus bakueth, I've gone. This is an example for stem-supplation in augmentation. We've now seen an abundance of information about all the various categories and dimensions that can or must be marked in an Old Ajish verb. This multi-dimensional character can be illustrated wonderfully by a form that I already quoted in the session about stress and morphophonics of Old Ajish. It is the verb asnachtuketh, again from the Milan glosses. This consists of a number of elements. The first a is the preposition out-of. Since the entire form forms part of a prepositional relative clause, the preposition out-of, a, is here being absorbed into the verbal complex. The s is one of the many formal markers to indicate relativity. Nacht is another marker of relativity, in addition to also turning the expression into a negative, and to serve as a host for an object pronoun, namely the object pronoun a, the infixed third-person plural, which refers to the object of the verb. Tuk, finally, is a subpletive perspective stem of the verb dober to bring. What perspective is precisely meant depends on the context, and here it is the potential perspective. One could therefore say that tug means something like to be able to bring. And finally, we have the ending að, which marks a third-person singular subject, and in combination with the form of the perspective stem, assigns the verbal form to the past subjunctive. The past subjunctive gives expression to a high degree of irreality. Putting all of these together, we get the translation out of which he would not have been able to bring them. Don't forget that this is a single word in Old Irish. The tenses and moves of Old Irish are expressed by combinations of the two fundamental formative elements, stem and ending. In theory, five stems should suffice to derive all finite verbal forms. The present stem, the subjunctive stem, the future stem, the preterite stem and the preterite passive stem. All of these stems have a large variety of morphological, very divergent subclasses, which I will discuss in a separate lecture. A sixth stem underlies the non-finite verbal form. In practice, predicting a particular verbal form on the basis of this information alone is usually not easy, because many other complicating and interfering factors come into play. At the bottom, I give you a few examples. In the first example, Moris, to praise, we see that we actually get along with five stems, with information about five stems, but when we look at the last example, for instance, for Kerrard, we see that I haven't even counted more than a dozen different stems that actually take part in the verbal formation of the different persons. These five finite verbal stems combine with various ending sets to create all eight tenses and moods of the basic tense and mood system of Old Irish. Numerous restrictions apply as to which stems can combine with which ending sets. There's no point in going into the details here, as the endings are readily available in grammars. But let me say a few words about the basic paradigms that arise from the stems combined with the endings. In most languages, it is common to arrange verbs in paradigms that consist of six forms, one for each person, in each of the numbers. Not so in Old Irish. Basic paradigms are much more extended in Old Irish. Let's look at simple verb first. In the absolute inflection of simple verbs, for instance, in independent position, we find separate endings for all traditional six persons. As you can see here. To these must be added forms with special relative endings for the third singular, first plural and third plural. Furthermore, the passive endings of the third singular and plural, which each has a special relative form as well, are also included in the basic paradigm. This gives 13 forms in the absolute conjugation. This is more or less mirrored in the conjunct conjugation with special endings for all of these forms, with the exception of relative endings, which are absent from the conjunct inflection. In total, the maximum Old Irish verbal paradigm of a simple verb consists of 21 different forms. The count is different for compound verbs. Since they only use conjunct endings, there are eight different forms in the deuteronic paradigm and eight in the protonic paradigm. 16 in total. With the exception of the imperative, all of the verbal categories can have the full paradigm, which gives 120 possible different forms. And again, with the exception of the imperative, all forms can also be augmented for a perspectivity, which results in 232 different forms. The count is a bit more complicated for simple verbs, but there we get 116 basic forms and 224 with augmentation. Polypersonal forms that include object pronouns haven't even been included in this count yet, which would again multiply these numbers by 16. If all elements that can potentially be incorporated into the verbal complex are considered, we would end up with several tens of thousands possible forms of the verbal complex that can be created for each single verb in Old Irish. Just to put this into perspective, in English it is possible to create five different forms of each verb. I think I should better stop now. In this session, I introduced you to the fundamental semantic and morphological categories of the Old Irish verb. In the next session, I will show you how the different tense and mood stems are formed. At Lochorin de Sifdwif, I thank you for your attention. Hasta la vista!
 Hello, welcome back to our series about old-age morphology.  In this session, I will talk about the fundamental categories and dimensions of verbal morphology.  The formal inventory of the old-age verbal system is too rich for a comprehensive description.  Instead, I can only outline it.  The old-age finite verb is multidimensional.  That is to say, it encodes in a multitude of grammatical dimensions and formal distinctions at the same time.  The distribution of formal markers and the structure of categorical information, however, are very unevenly balanced.  For example, in the preterite.  Some formations have a separate preterite lending set, and others use the primary endings.  But whereas everywhere else in the system primary endings are contrasted with secondary endings, this is not so in the preterite.  Or, to cite another example, whereas in simple verbs, relativity is expressed by separate endings that are indifferent to the syntactic role of the relativised item.  Compound verbs express relativity through verb-intralling mutations that also encode syntactic information.  The semantic or content dimensions of old-age finite verbs are personal number,  tense and aspect, mood, voice, relativity and perspectivity, first of all.  Person and number have been ignored in this table since they appear in all categories equally.  Strictly speaking, object-prenominality should also be included as a dimension of its own,  since pronominal objects can only be encoded as infixes or suffixes inside the verbal complex, not outside.  But in order not to overload the presentation, this will be discussed in a later session about syntax by my colleague Aaron Griffith.  In addition, finite verbs also encode the purely formal dimensions,  deponentiality and dependency, both of which possess no semantic content, but only cause the number of possible forms to multiply.  I have already introduced the concept of dependency in the previous session about the verbal complex.  Because of their redundancy, deponentiality and dependency were eliminated in the course of Irish language history.  Perspectivity and object-prenominality are optional dimensions.  Marking verbs in these dimensions imparts additional information to an already complete verbal form.  Other dimensions are obligatory, which means that a finite verbal form always carries inherently relevant information concerning these dimensions,  even if, occasionally, one or more of those categorical oppositions may be neutralized.  The category of person and number is fusional. The two dimensions cannot be separated.  All finite verbs are obligatorily marked for subject, person and number, which finds morphological expression in the personal endings.  All Irish is a pro-drop language. The subject is expressed by the verbal endings alone and never by independent subject pronouns.  The usual three persons and the two numbers singular and plural are indicated.  There is no unmarked member in this whole dimension, although there is a very, very slight tendency among singular persons to lack formal marking.  If I say something about mood, all Irish distinguishes the two universal modalities, realis and irrealis.  The realis indicates that something belongs to the known, experienced world, or that at least the speaker believes so.  The irrealis speaks of imagined, desired worlds. The realis is grammatically represented by the mood that is split into the three tenses past, present and future.  The present is encoded by the morphological category indicative present, which additionally can give expression to events without time reference, i.e. generic action, and to past events, the usage of historical present.  Future events must be encoded by the morphological category future.  In the past there is also a spectral distinction between a perfective pretorite and an imperfective imperfect.  The pretorite denotes actions that were completed in the past, and is frequently used for narrative purposes.  The imperfect, on the other hand, encodes repeated or custom reaction in the past.  The irrealis is represented by the mood's imperative, subjunctive and conditional.  The imperative is the mood for immediate orders.  Special imperative forms can be created for all persons in old age, which is quite unusual. This includes the first person singular.  The conditional refers to hypothetical events, but it also supplies a future for a past frame of reference.  The subjunctive characterizes a verbal action as to some degree removed from factuality.  Therefore, its semantic range goes from the expression of wishes over uncertainty to irreality.  There are two formal categories of subjunctive, the present subjunctive and the past subjunctive, and the latter of the two is further removed from reality.  In complement clauses, finally, the subjunctive serves also as a mere marker of subordination.  Voice is a binary dimension, comprising the two categories active and passive.  There are special active endings for all persons and numbers.  The active voice, on the other hand, is marked with special endings only for the third person, third person singular and third person plural.  The third person singular in a passive also serves as an impersonal form, and as such, supplies the passive voice for the first and second persons in constructions with object-prenominal marking.  Impersonals can also be formed even of intransitives.  The active voice has two possible formal expressions.  Every old Irish verb belongs to one category of a purely formal binary opposition, one characterized by active endings, the other by deponent endings, and those of the second type we call components.  The term active ending that I use here must not be mistaken with the active voice, because both active and deponent endings are active in voice.  The difference is of an entirely redundant formal nature.  Deponent verbs are only common among weak verbs. There are very few deponents among strong verb classes.  Deponent endings typically resemble their active counterparts with an additional r at the end, so compare the non-deponent cottage they love with the ending idj with the deponent form molygier they praise.  Or a pretroid form gaad, I prayed, which is a zero ending, versus manor, I thought, where the r is equivalent to the zero ending of the active non-deponent form.  Deponents were gradually eliminated from the language, beginning already in the earliest phase of a tested old Irish.  Diachronically, deponents continue verbs with middle inflection, but whereas in Indo-European the middle voice indicated some sort of self-centered verbal action, and thus contrasted functionally with the active, in Irish this has become a completely non-functional, merely lexical property.  Old Irish finite verbs appear again in one of two states, so we're back in the binary relationships, namely non-relative and relative.  Non-relative is the unmarked member. Relative means that the clause which is headed by the relative verb stands in a subordinate relationship of some sort to another clause.  Relativity in Old Irish is marked by an extremely intricate system of morphological, morphophonological, syntactical and pronominal means.  It's so complicated that I would at least need one or two additional sessions to talk about it, so I won't even start.  Aaron Griffith will say a few things about it in his sessions on syntax.  I will just show you one example, a sentence that involves three relative verbal forms, each of a different formal type.  The sentence is  In ti cháras nech agas for tiad, for kártasída írf ishélvath in díir for tiad.  He, whom somebody loves and whom he helps, is then cast into the possession of the man who helps him.  The sentence is from the Milan glosses.  The three verbal forms, the three relative forms are kártasída, for tiad and for tiad.  In kártasída, the first verb, which means whom he loves, it has a special relative ending, and it shows relative lenition,  which expresses the object and the seedant here, which is actually a bit unusual for normal grammar.  The next verb, for tiad, whom he helps, expresses the same relationship, object relationship,  but it has no special ending, and it uses a nasalizing relative construction, so it's for tiad instead of for tiad.  Finally, we have for tiad, who helps him.  This expresses subject antecedent.  The relativity is expressed through the type of the pronoun that is found, the id part here,  and through the relative lenition that is found on the pronoun itself.  All finite verbs, except for imperatives, can be augmented to change the perspective by which the speaker looks at the verbal action.  Typically, a grammatical element, usually the preverb ro, is infixed or prefixed to a given verbal form in order to mark the perspective.  But other preverbs or different strategies, such as stem-supplation, are also possible.  Perspective augmentation means that a resultative or potential meaning is added to the plain verbal action.  So, for instance, we have here asper says versus the augmented form asröver, can say, so the ro adds the potential meaning here,  or asper said versus asröver has said, or we have loth, I went, versus bakueth, I've gone.  This is an example for stem-supplation in augmentation.  We've now seen an abundance of information about all the various categories and dimensions that can or must be marked in an Old Ajish verb.  This multi-dimensional character can be illustrated wonderfully by a form that I already quoted in the session about stress and morphophonics of Old Ajish.  It is the verb asnachtuketh, again from the Milan glosses.  This consists of a number of elements. The first a is the preposition out-of.  Since the entire form forms part of a prepositional relative clause, the preposition out-of, a, is here being absorbed into the verbal complex.  The s is one of the many formal markers to indicate relativity.  Nacht is another marker of relativity, in addition to also turning the expression into a negative, and to serve as a host for an object pronoun, namely the object pronoun a,  the infixed third-person plural, which refers to the object of the verb.  Tuk, finally, is a subpletive perspective stem of the verb dober to bring.  What perspective is precisely meant depends on the context, and here it is the potential perspective.  One could therefore say that tug means something like to be able to bring.  And finally, we have the ending að, which marks a third-person singular subject, and in combination with the form of the perspective stem,  assigns the verbal form to the past subjunctive. The past subjunctive gives expression to a high degree of irreality.  Putting all of these together, we get the translation out of which he would not have been able to bring them.  Don't forget that this is a single word in Old Irish.  The tenses and moves of Old Irish are expressed by combinations of the two fundamental formative elements, stem and ending.  In theory, five stems should suffice to derive all finite verbal forms.  The present stem, the subjunctive stem, the future stem, the preterite stem and the preterite passive stem.  All of these stems have a large variety of morphological, very divergent subclasses, which I will discuss in a separate lecture.  A sixth stem underlies the non-finite verbal form.  In practice, predicting a particular verbal form on the basis of this information alone is usually not easy,  because many other complicating and interfering factors come into play.  At the bottom, I give you a few examples. In the first example, Moris, to praise, we see that we actually get along with five stems,  with information about five stems, but when we look at the last example, for instance, for Kerrard,  we see that I haven't even counted more than a dozen different stems that actually take part in the verbal formation of the different persons.  These five finite verbal stems combine with various ending sets to create all eight tenses and moods of the basic tense and mood system of Old Irish.  Numerous restrictions apply as to which stems can combine with which ending sets.  There's no point in going into the details here, as the endings are readily available in grammars.  But let me say a few words about the basic paradigms that arise from the stems combined with the endings.  In most languages, it is common to arrange verbs in paradigms that consist of six forms, one for each person, in each of the numbers.  Not so in Old Irish. Basic paradigms are much more extended in Old Irish. Let's look at simple verb first.  In the absolute inflection of simple verbs, for instance, in independent position, we find separate endings for all traditional six persons.  As you can see here. To these must be added forms with special relative endings for the third singular, first plural and third plural.  Furthermore, the passive endings of the third singular and plural, which each has a special relative form as well, are also included in the basic paradigm.  This gives 13 forms in the absolute conjugation.  This is more or less mirrored in the conjunct conjugation with special endings for all of these forms, with the exception of relative endings, which are absent from the conjunct inflection.  In total, the maximum Old Irish verbal paradigm of a simple verb consists of 21 different forms.  The count is different for compound verbs.  Since they only use conjunct endings, there are eight different forms in the deuteronic paradigm and eight in the protonic paradigm. 16 in total.  With the exception of the imperative, all of the verbal categories can have the full paradigm, which gives 120 possible different forms.  And again, with the exception of the imperative, all forms can also be augmented for a perspectivity, which results in 232 different forms.  The count is a bit more complicated for simple verbs, but there we get 116 basic forms and 224 with augmentation.  Polypersonal forms that include object pronouns haven't even been included in this count yet, which would again multiply these numbers by 16.  If all elements that can potentially be incorporated into the verbal complex are considered,  we would end up with several tens of thousands possible forms of the verbal complex that can be created for each single verb in Old Irish.  Just to put this into perspective, in English it is possible to create five different forms of each verb.  I think I should better stop now.  In this session, I introduced you to the fundamental semantic and morphological categories of the Old Irish verb.  In the next session, I will show you how the different tense and mood stems are formed.  At Lochorin de Sifdwif, I thank you for your attention.  Hasta la vista!
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