Michal Boleslav Mechura's Pota Focal:

http://www.potafocal.com/

It's strength is in the examples it provides. It doesn't just give several Irish words for an English one, it sorts them out so you can tell which one you want, and it shows how to use it in a phrase.

Pota Focal has been mentioned here before, and Michal is a sporadic regular here, but I just realized that there are a lot of people who are not aware of this excellent resource.

Dennis a chara,

You changed your photo...is this you?

I went to the website, I like it. I hope they plan to add more entries to it soon. It almost looks like they are trying to be a middle ground for the English-Irish Online Dictionary and An Foclóir Beag.

They only thing I noticed was that they didn't give the conjugations for the verbs. I know the future tense tells you the conjugation, but I wish they would list it in more dictionaries. I don't see how a fuss can be made about (m1, f2, m3...) because it is required knowledge for the declination of a noun, and then not list (1st, 2nd) when it is just as required for the conjugation of the verb...but that is just a personal pet peeve of mine.


(Message edited by do_chinniúint on May 10, 2008)

Are we looking at the same dictionary? I've got the entry for éalaigh open and above the definition it gives "past: d'éalaigh, pres: éalaíonn, fut: éalóidh, vn: éalú, vadj: éalaithe".

Moreover, isn't the conjugation predictable from the stem in any case? I thought all second conjugation verbs were either (a) multisyllabic and ending in -igh (e.g. mínigh, gortaigh, clúdaigh, etc.) or (b) multisyllabic and syncopating (e.g. ceangail, cogain, imir, etc.). Can you think of any regular verbs which don't fit one of these two categories?

quote:

You changed your photo...is this you?

Is mise atá ann fós... le féasóg anois.

Domhnaillín breac na dtruslóg...

If you know the general rules of thumb you can predict a verbs conjugation based off it's stem. But if you are not familiar with them, it is not so easy. When I was learning how to recognize the verbs, I relied heavily on the Gramadach na Gaeilge website. I still feel that it is one of best sites for beginners and grammar.

Using their system, you can make an educated guess based off the stem. I think the easiest way is to learn the rules for a 1st conjugation verb only, and then if it doesn't apply, then it is a 2nd conjugation. Or vice versa depending on you personal style.

But the future tense is a dead give away. If the future tense ends in a "f..." it is a 1st conjugation verb. If the future tense doesn't end in a "ó... or eo..." it is a 2nd conjugation verb. It doesn't matter if the verb mono or polysyllabic, syncopated, or what it ends with...if there is an "f" in the future tense it is a 1st conjugation verb.

I was always told that Irish verbs are classified by their second person present tense. But I always found the future tense to be the easiest way to separate the two. Maybe someone here can speak more about this. Celtic languages, especially Irish, is not my area of expertise.

Irish verbs remind me of the chicken and the egg paradox. In order to know to conjugate the verb you have to know its conjugation, but in order to know its conjugation, you have to know how to conjugate it.

And I will change my photo soon also, I just haven't found a photo of me that I like yet. And how can you not find my current photo adorable ;0)


(Message edited by do_chinniúint on May 10, 2008)

either (a) multisyllabic and ending in -igh (e.g. mínigh, gortaigh, clúdaigh, etc.) or (b) multisyllabic and syncopating (e.g. ceangail, cogain, imir, etc.). Can you think of any regular verbs which don't fit one of these two categories?

foghlaim

sorry,

i just go to reading my post...

what I meant to say so is that if the future tense does end in an "ó...or...eo..." it is a 2nd conjugation.

The only real difference between the 2 conjugations *is* how the future form is made: f or long o, that's true.

Because in the present tense, there's no real difference except in spelling:
dóim is dóigh-im
ceannaím is ceannaigh-im
molaim hasn’t changed

The only difference is in spelling (the modern one has simplified some endings), not in the conjugation.

By the way, some verbs don't follow the standard rules in the Gaeltacht:

féachfaidh is féachóchaidh in Ulster
éistfidh is éisteochaidh in several dialects
smaoi(n)teoidh may be smaoi(n)tfidh sometimes, if I remember well...

While it is possible to guess the conjugation based off the stem, I wonder if the desire to do so is driven by English speaking people's experiences with other languages?

I wonder how many languages besides the Celtic languages have no infinitives? Looking generally across the language spectrum, it seems like most of the major languages do. I wonder if their is something to that? Like maybe there is something about human brains that natually likes the infinitive concept? If this is true, then this is just another reason why languages like Irish need to survive, to show the diversity of human cognition.

Plenty of languages have no infinitive. In fact, lack of one is a central features characterising the Balkan Sprachbund.

Many languages go even further and have no verbal inflections whatsoever. It makes no sense to talk about an "infinitive" in Chinese, for instance, since the verb will have exactly the same form in all instances. But even highly-inflected languages make lack an infinitive. Arabic verbs, for instance, each have hundreds of possible inflected forms, but not one of these corresponds to an SAE infinitive; the citation form of Arabic verbs is the third-person masculine singular perfective.

Given all this, I can only assume that when you say "most of the major languages", what you really mean is "the handful of European languages I'm personally familiar with".

I meant major in terms of numbers of speakers actually...

And yes most of the languages with the most speakers have an infinitive form. While I know that language families share grammatical features, if you look at the top 30 languages by number of speakers, which makes up the majority of the language being spoken on our planet, most are using an infinitive form. Granted these thirty languages are only .004% of the languages of the world, they do represent the majority the world’s population.

Mandarin
Hindi
Spanish
English
Arabic
Portuguese
Bengali
Russian
Japanese
German
Punjabi
Javanese
Korean
Vietnamese
Telugu
Marathi
Tamil
French
Urdu
Italian
Turkish
Persian
Guajarati
Polish
Ukrainian
Malayalam
Kannada
Oriya
Burmese
Thai

These are listed by population of speakers alone from my 1990 chart, one or two may be out of order do to current populations.

Now it is true that some of these fall into the same language family, but then if I was to take certain language families, and list every language within it, the numbers would only grow. For instance, you could say well German only has about 85 million speakers, but if you start to consider that German is only one language in a family of languages like it, ( German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic….) soon the Germanic family starts gaining influence in terms of numbers of people in this world using an infinitive. And I am only concentrating on major languages; I haven't even tapped the lesser spoken Native American or African families.

I think you will find that when it comes to the majority of the langauge being spoken in the world, an infinitive form is the norm.

I think you will find that when it comes to the majority of the langauge being spoken in the world, an infinitive form is the norm.

Not to spill too much electronic ink on a tangent, but you'll recall that I already mentioned both Chinese (all varieties) and Arabic as major languages without infinitive forms. That's 25% of the world's population right there. So how can we trust your claims without some assurances that you actually know which of the languages you list have infinitives and which do not? (Keeping in mind, of course, that the word "infinitive" means quite different things in different languages. That is, just because grammarians of, say, Turkish or Portuguese call a particular form an "infinitive" doesn't mean the form is the equivalent of, say, a German infinitive for all intents and purposes.)

Not at all...And I apologize to the tangent we are taking on this thread, but it is a very interesting debate shared by language lovers across the world.

I understand what you are saying but even with 25% of the world's population covered, that still leaves 75% of the world's speakers to be addressed so to speak ;) and that is the majority.

I will admit that the definition of "infinitive" is a problem, considering the very concept of infinitive action is shown in every language including Mandarin and Arabic. Also we must be on the some level on the matter of the numbers being discussed. I am talking about native/first language speakers. When you start calculating in secondary users, the numbers become fuzzy for both sides of the debate. Also, right now I am only talking about a single language. I am going to refrain from using the sum of the language family for now.

Languages on the list with the concept of an infinitive = to that of something like the German infinitive...

The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) lists the following as the top languages by population: (number of native speakers in parentheses)

Chinese(Mandarin) (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic* (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French* (79,572,000)

Mandarin/Arabic/Japanese combined = 1,237,082,000
All others combined = 1,542,572,000

Even in the top ten we see the numbers of Mandarin and Arabic while massive and not to be neglected, are off set with just a few languages. Once we start to include the others, I think you will see a tilt occur.

I will say that European languages are not a fair representation of the "language spectrum." I was incorrect in that statement. I will take that phrasing back, what I meant is that the major linguistic influences tend to be languages that use a "European" sense of the infinitive. However, I will not yield that a lot of language families use this sense also.

I will admit that the definition of "infinitive" is a problem, considering the very concept of infinitive action is shown in every language including Mandarin and Arabic.

Do you even know what you mean by "the very concept of infinitive action"? I'm sure I don't. As I pointed out already, for Mandarin it doesn't make any sense to distinguish between finite and non-finite verbs at all. In Arabic, finite forms are regularly used where speakers of European languages would expect non-finite forms (including--but not limited to--infinitives)--and vice-versa.

Moreover, if your definition of "infinitive" is derived from the inflectionally-invariable forms of Western European languages, you may be surprised at the behaviour of so-called "infinitives" in other languages--even Indo-European languages like Hindi. In many respects, the Hindi "infinitive" acts more like a SAE participle.

In order not to prejudice the discussion too much, let's call this "the -nā form" after its distinctive ending. Grammatically, it's a masculine noun and declines as such, e.g. pīne kā pānī "drinking water" (showing oblique marking on pīnā before the "genitive" postposition kā). Seem familiar? It should: One sees exactly the same behaviour with the Irish verb-noun, e.g. uisce ólta (lit. "water of drinking").

But this doesn't tell the whole story, since in certain cases -nā forms agree with their objects in the same manner as Hindi "participles". For instance, in mujhe hindī sīkhnī cāhie thā "I ought to learn Hindi", sīkhnā "learn" takes the same ending as its (singular feminine) object. (Cf. maiṁne hindī sīkhī "I (have) learned Hindi", where sīkhā is a past-participle functioning as a finite verb.)

So is the Hindi -nā form really more of a "participle"? One could certainly make that argument. But the real lesson is that using terms like these cross-linguistically is inherently problematic, so what can be assumed from the existence of the term "infinitive" in a linguistic description is really quite limited. That's why I object to ill-founded speculation about such vagueries as an "infinitive concept".

Even in the top ten we see the numbers of Mandarin and Arabic while massive and not to be neglected, are off set with just a few languages. Once we start to include the others, I think you will see a tilt occur.

Holy faulty sampling, Batman! Seven of the the top ten are Indo-European languages, but of the next ten, only four are. The remaining non-IE languages account for over 420 million speakers. For the next tier, the proportions are 9 IE to 11 non-IE. So there's no particular reason to believe that your generalisation will hold for a larger sample of languages--and, in fact, more evidence to suggest that it won't. (After all, less than 11% of the world's population lives in Europe.)

I will take that phrasing back, what I meant is that the major linguistic influences tend to be languages that use a "European" sense of the infinitive.

To sum up: You need to explain what you mean by a "'European' sense of the infinitive" before this claim can even be evaluated.

Dhá rud, a Dhomnaillín:

quote:

uisce ólta (lit. "water of drinking")

Tá sé seo ceart ó thaobh na gramadaí de, is dócha, ach ní chloistear de ghnáth é, mura bhfuil dul amú orm (the standard disclaimer!). Tá sé le feiceáil i gcáipéisí oifigiúla, ach is dóigh liom go bhfuil "uisce óil" níos fearr agus i bhfad níos coitianta . "Uisce inólta" a deirtear, ach níl an ginideach i gceist ansin.

quote:

mujhe hindī sīkhnī cāhie thā "I ought to learn Hindi"

Ní chuirfinn "thâ" leis an abairt seo. Is leor "câhie".

Actualy, my sampling was not faulty...the numbers don't lie. With 449 languages and over 3 billion first language speakers...the Indo-European language family has the largest number of speakers than any other language family!

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/december/IEFamily.html#intro

These are the 10 most spoken languages in the world by first language speakers. These 10 languages alone make up roughly 43% of the world's speakers.

Now the numbers may be off for a number of reasons. This was actually published in 2000 which doesn't account for the current populations. And they were only going off of the numbers reported by the nation's governments which could have been wrong also....and the list goes on. But I am willing to bet they are still in the same ball park.

I hate to still from Wikipedia of all places, but I feel they put the best way of what I am thinking about when I say infinitive:

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual (traditional) description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages; however, in languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:

In most of their uses, infinitives are non-finite verbs.

They function as other lexical categories — usually nouns — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.

They do not represent any of the verb's arguments (as employer and employee do).

They are not inflected to agree with any subject, and their subject, if they have one, is not case-marked as such.

They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence.

They are the verb's lemma, citation form, and/or name; that is, they are regarded as its basic uninflected form, and/or they are used in giving its definition or conjugation.

They do not have tense, aspect, moods, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, aspects, moods, and/or voices that they can use. (In languages where infinitives do not have moods at all, they are usually treated as being their own non-finite mood.)

They are used with auxiliary verbs.

However, it bears repeating that none of the above is a defining quality of the infinitive; infinitives do not have all these properties in every language, as it is shown below, and other verb forms may have one or more of them. For example, English gerunds and participles have most of these properties as well.

When you look at the criteria above it is pretty plain to see that they are using a very "Indo-European" perspective when it comes to the guidelines. This is also how I am looking on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive

You're right, numbers don't lie: However you spin it, 43% is still not "most". Moreover, (as I've already pointed out more than once) not even all Indo-European languages have infinitives, even in name. According to the definition you are using, does the Hindi -nā form qualify as an infinitive? Why or why not? What about the Portuguese personal infinitive?

As for Wikipedia, I find their articles quite reliable on linguistic subjects overall. However, if you like the work of SIL (the authority behind Ethnologue), you should know about their Glossary of Linguistic Terms: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Index.htm

Of course, their definitions do tend to be on the terse side. The answer to "What is an infinitive?" is "An infinitive is the base form of a verb. It is unmarked for inflectional categories such as the following: Aspect, Modality, Number, Person, Tense."

Maybe I don't understand what the infinitive is, but I thought these sentences contain it:

Dúirt sé liom an doras a dhúnadh.
Rinne mé iarracht an fhuinneog a oscailt.
B'aoibhinn liom dul chun na gaeltachta.

Many moons ago, I was taught, and still like this particular way of looking at it, that an infinitive was simply an action that isn't assigned any details. It doesn't tell you when it happened, who was doing it, and in what manner they were doing it.

What Domhnaillíin and I have been discussing is that the problem is that many languages do this, but they do not like to label this usage as "infinitive" for a number of reasons. One of the chief reasons being rejection of western stratifications ;-)

What I was trying to say earlier, is that we Western Europeans, and I dare say many others across the globe ;-), have gotten in the habit of wanting an infinitive form because we like things in neat little categories and orders. Especially when it comes to dictionaries.

If you look at Russian, Spanish, and German as examples...verbs are put into their categories first by their infinitives, and then broken down into subcategories from there. It makes them easy to spot, and learn the rules of conjugation.

Irish will tell you that it doesn't have an infinitive, as will other languages. But they actually do, the problem is that they don't have what we would call a traditional infinitive form. The concept is formed by doing something to or with the verb.

For instance, if we look at Arabic, they do have an infinitive.

"...In Arabic verbs take their infinitive form by using the past form of that verb and conjugate it to the third person singular “he”, to make it simple here is an example: to draw = rasama = رسم (he drew), to write = kataba (he wrote) = كتب. daraba ضرب (to hit)…"

"...To form the present tense in Arabic you need to extract the stem from the verb in the infinitive first, for example: To draw = rasama رسم è Stem is rsm..."

http://arabic.speak7.com/arabic_verbs.htm

"...The Arabic language has what are referred to as infinitives. Some may also refer to this as the verbal noun or gerund. The scholars of Arabic call it المصدر. The Arabic dictionary indicates to us the proper form for the infinitive. Here is an example; عزم 'azama i ('azm, عزيمة 'azimah) to decide, resolve... both the words 'azm and 'azimah mean determination. Another example maybe دخل which means to enter and دخول means entering. As we said the student must acquaint himself with the function of the dictionary to appreciate this..."

http://lovethesunnah.blogspot.com/2008/03/arabic-infinitives.html

And this is what Irish does also. It does not have a traditional sense of an infinitive form. It does however, use the infinitive concept usually in the form of gerund or verbal noun.

A Chinniúint, you (and the authors of the unvetted websites you're quoting) are confusing "infinitives" with "citation forms". In languages with an infinitive (more-or-less strictly defined according to Western European norms), this is generally used as the citation form. (Not always, however; many dictionaries of Latin, for instance, prefer the first-person singular present tense indicative.)

Languages without an infinitive obviously have to use something else as a citation form. Often, this is the morphologically least-complex form (which is why the second-person singular imperative is used in Irish); the choice of third-person singular past tense indicative in Arabic is probably due to how easy it makes the triliteral root to identify.

However, the fact that a finite form is used as a citation form doesn't make it an "infinitive" any more than, say, milking a goat makes it a cow.

Many moons ago, I was taught, and still like this particular way of looking at it, that an infinitive was simply an action that isn't assigned any details. It doesn't tell you when it happened, who was doing it, and in what manner they were doing it.

The problem with this definition is that it's so simplistic that it's true not only of infinitives but all other non-finite verbal forms--participles, gerunds, supines, etc.--as well, and even of other parts of speech which are only derived from verbal stems. After all, "action" by itself doesn't tell you who was acting, when this took place, and in what manner. That doesn't make it an "infinitive". The same is true for Irish verb-nouns like dúnadh, oscailt, and dul.


A Thomáis,

Tá na habairtí seo ar comhbhrí le habairtí Béarla go bhfuil clásail infinideacha iontu, ach ní fhéadaimid tátal a bhaint as sin go bhfuil infinidigh sna habairtí Gaelainne leis. Níl aon difríocht ghramadúil i nGaelainn idir B'aoibhinn liom dul chun na Gaeltachta agus B'aoibhinn liom turas chun na Gaeltachta. An ciallaíonn sin gur turas infinideach leis?

Actually, every website I go to on Arabic uses the word infinitive...are they all wrong? I highly doubt that.

"milking a goat makes it a cow."

While I know what you mean with this, it actually does when you think about it. One side is saying look here, that is filling the function of in infinitive therefore it is an infinitive...the other side is saying just because you say it is, doesn't make it so. I think it comes down to semantics.

See and here we have a the problem at hand, you can call it what you want, infinitive or citation form...the but it fills the function so well that crediible people are willing to say it is filling the function of an infinitive enough to call it that.

A verb can only be finite or non-finite. So that definition does hold to all those other forms as well. I think the question is are non-finite and infinite really different...

However, you do bring up an excellent point which brings us full circle to the dictionary topic. The form used for citation in a dictionary is very important. And Irish is guilty of not having many dictionaries out there that list the conjugations of the verbs which is important to know in order to form the conjugations.

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on May 15, 2008)

(Message edited by do_chinniúint on May 15, 2008)

quote:

And Irish is guilty of not having many dictionaries out there that list the conjugations of the verbs which is important to know in order to form the conjugations.

Tá an Ghaeilge ciontach...?! In ainn dílis Dé, éirigh as an gcaint seo ar fad agus abair rud éigin sa teanga féin. Tá an foclóir Collins agat, nach bhfuil? Tá fáil agat ar an bhFoclóir Beag ar líne, nach bhfuil?

Actually, every website I go to on Arabic uses the word infinitive...are they all wrong?

Have you ever considered, I dunno, cracking an actual book? Websites have their place, but they're generally not good substitutes for actual descriptive grammars written by linguists. Find me one of those that calls the Arabic citation form an "infinitive".

One side is saying look here, that is filling the function of in infinitive therefore it is an infinitive...the other side is saying just because you say it is, doesn't make it so. I think it comes down to semantics.

Then I think that, in addition to not knowing what an "infinitive" is, you also don't know what "semantics" is.

Furnishing a citation form is one function of an infinitive, just as furnishing milk is one function of a cow. But just as other animals can be milked and this doesn't imply that they have any of the other functions of cows, other verbal forms can function as citation forms and this doesn't imply that they have any of the other functions of infinitives.

I think the question is are non-finite and infinite really different.

I don't think that's a question. Infinitives are a proper subset of non-finite verbs. That is, all infinitives are non-finite forms, but that doesn't make all non-finite forms infinitives. Deliberately ignoring the distinction is not in anyone's best interest.

As I made clear nine posts back, yes, on some level all these names are arbitrary and what is called an "infinitive" in one language could just as well be referred to by another term. And a cow by any other name would still give milk. But just as we don't say "cow" when we mean "goat" because of the confusion it would cause, there's no reason to say "infinitive" when a term like "non-finite verb", "participle", "verbal noun" more closely fits what we're trying to describe.

Now wait a minute...

Are you actually going to sit there and tell me that the linguists who put information on a website are not as good as the linguists who write books? Are you serious?

I am a dialectologist, and as a linguist, I have to say you just insulted the entire linguistic community with those comments. You don't seem to be understanding the differences between semantics and applied semantics, if you did you would not have made that comment.

But if you are not willing to accept what I am saying try "cracking open" Structuralist Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Charles A.Ferguson Papers, 1954-1994 (Studies in Semitic Languages & Linguistics)

Understanding Arabic: Essays in Contemporary Linguistics in Honor of El-Said Badawi.

Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XX by Mughazy

I have them right in front of me and they are saying the same thing I am...but hey, they are only books written by some of the leading linguists. What do they know...

You mean to tell me you've had access to actual scholarly sources all this time? So why even waste our time by quoting amateur sites?

I see it's asking too much for you to provide actual supporting citations, but no matter: My library has most if not all of those works. So if you just give me page numbers, I can look 'em up myself when I get back from Missouri and see whether they really do say "the same thing" that you do.

Are you actually going to sit there and tell me that the linguists who put information on a website are not as good as the linguists who write books?

If I thought that, then why would I cite the SIL website as an authoritative resource? Really, now, try to talk some sense.

quote:

when I get back from Missouri

Céard atá ar siúl i Missouri? Comhdháil, cluiche, nó cairde?

Hmm...

I can do better. I can show you. The last book I bought on Arabic was "A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic" by Karin C. Ryding. Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic, Department of Arabic Language, Literature and Linguistics, Georgetown University.

The first time she does it is on page 75, but she actually makes references to this in a number of other areas. But hey, not like she's an expert or anything ;-)

http://books.google.com/books?id=hF_P3UpKZMkC&pg=PP131&lpg=PP131&dq=arabic+verba l+nouns&source=web&ots=ii61L0EP9r&sig=2PZDZbluJl7JgwGdlHNFSTLUsx8&hl=en

As for the other books, I will let you look it up. You won't have to look very far. Just look for anything related to verbal nouns and the function they fill in Arabic. They all say compare them or down right equate them to infinitives.

Dennis,

Sorry I never saw your post above..

I have both FGB and Collins Gem with me. When I said that Irish dictionaries don't list the conjugations, I meant they don't list the conjugation to which they belong. (1st, 2nd)

They list the head word, whether it is transitive or intransitive, (FGB lists some conjugations but not for all entries) and then the definitions...

But most courses out there teach how to conjugate verbs based off their conjugation only. For instance, they say if the verb is a 1st conjugation verb, do this...

But lets say a beginner who has been taught with this method wants to say "The boy gargles the water." They are told by a friend that the word for "gargle" is "craosfholc." However, they need to look up "craosfholc" in a dictionary because it's a new word for them.

If they use FGB they will find it on page 461:

craosfholc v.t. (pp.~tha). Gargle

If they use Collin's they will find it on page 429:

craosfholc vt, vi gargle

Now what about these two entries is going to help a this student out?

Most courses out there forget to mention the rule about a polysyllabic verbs made of two monosyllabic verbs. In fact, I only recently learned this little trick. It was not mentioned in Learning Irish, Irish On Your Own, or Teach Yourself Irish which are the three main marketed courses. It wasn't even mentioned in my Briathra Na Gaeilge which only covers verbs. The first time I saw this was on the Gramadach Na Gaeilge website...

In fact, unless they were to see this word actually conjugated...it is easy to see how they might be mislead and believe it is a 2nd conjugation verb.

That is a flaw in my opinion.

This type of confusion could be avoided simply by this.

craosfholc (1) vt, vi gargle

or

craosfholc (craosfholcfaidh) vt, vi gargle

For money reasons I think the first is a better course of action.

Now is it important to develop the ability to recognize verbs on sight? Yes. Will a person develop this ability with time and practice? Yes. But why not help them out a little along the way...

A Chinniúint,

No, I don't have to look very far to confirm my suspicion that the sources do not, in fact, say what you're claiming they say. Take the Ryding, for instance. (I assume this is the passage you have in mind):

In terms of their syntactic usages, verbal nouns may also express in Arabic what an infinitive expresses in English.

It could not be more plain that Ryding is explicitly not claiming that an Arabic verbal noun is identical to an infinitive. All she tells us here is that it may be used in Arabic where an infinitive may be used in English. So what? As already mentioned, a finite verb may be used in Arabic where English would use an infinitive (something she even explains in the footnote to this sentence). If you were to apply the same transferential logic you do here in reverse, then you could conclude that English has no infinitive either, only finite verbs.

As for the other "sources" you gave, I've perused them and there's no mention of "infinitives" anywhere--even to make the kind of loose cross-linguistic comparison that Ryder makes. Again, if you have precise passages in mind, basic academic courtesy demands that you cite them properly. In the absence of these citations, the most charitable conclusion I can draw is that you are ignorant of the actual contents of these works. Otherwise, it can only be that you are deliberately and maliciously wasting my time by sending me on a wild goose chase.

While I was retrieving them, however, I did decide to test you newest claim (i.e. "Just look for anything related to verbal nouns and the function they fill in Arabic. They all say compare them or down right equate them to infinitives.") by examining some of the other Arabic grammatical texts on the shelves. Again, I couldn't find the word "infinitive" in any of them, much less any statement supporting the existence of an infinitive in Arabic.

On the subject of verbal nouns, here's what, for instance, Fischer's Grammar of Classical Arabic (in Jonathan Rodgers' English translation) has to say: "Verbal substantives embody the meaning of the verb without any of its functional properties." (My emphasis.) Once more, you could hardly hope for a clearer statement that Arabic verbal nouns are not infinitives, since one of the defining characteristic of an "infinitive" is that it has one or more of the functional properties of a verb. So your empirical claim ("They all say compare them or down right equate them to infinitives") is demonstrably false.

She most certainly is equating them to filling the function of an infinitive in their syntactical usages.

That was my point. Not that they were infinitives, but that they fill the function of infinitives.

In terms of their syntactic usages, verbal nouns may also express in Arabic what an infinitive expresses in English.

You are reading this statement the way you want to read it. Just because she doesn't come out and say it, doesn't mean that she isn't implying it. Especially when you read further into the book and she makes several comparisons of verbal nouns, and the citation form, as filling the function of an infinitive in Arabic. That is just your interpretation of her work. And I will respect that, but my interpretation is that she is equating them to infinitives. And you refuse to accept that.

But I will do you a favor and drop it for two reason, one it doesn't really have any value for Irish, it was a tangant we probably should never have gone off on...

And two, you have made it that clear you are going to refuse to accept anything I show you. I have no way of know what you "shelves" contain or what you know of the matter, but you have already judged me and what I know. I do not have time for little minds like that.

Those sites that I listed, the information provided were put there by linguists, or the works of linguists. And you called them amateur at best, I then showed you one of the leading experts in the field saying that the verbal noun was in fact filling the functions of an infinitive, something you said didn't happen, and you refused to accept that.

I see no point in debating this further with you.

A Dhennis,

quote:

Céard atá ar siúl i Missouri? Comhdháil, cluiche, nó cairde?

An dara cheann, eadhon daorchluiche: St. Louis vs Tampa Bay. Ach ní raibh an cluiche daor i n-aon chor mar ba bhronntanas na ticéid. Do thug mo dhriofúr dom dhreatháir óg agus a bheann iad, ach ní raibh sí in ann é a thionlacan. A caillteanas, mo ghnóthachan!

quote:

mo ghnóthachan!

Agus gnóthachan na gCardinals chomh maith. Fuair siad an bua ar Tampa Bay... mar atá a fhios agat!

Dála an scéil, is ait an focal é "daorchluiche". An bhfuil an cluiche seo chomh daor sin dáiríre?