An diofar eadar na mùthaidhean a rinneadh air "An Tràigh"

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(Rinn an cleachdaiche 77 mùthadh eadar-mheadhanach nach eil 77 'gan sealltainn)
Loidhne 1: Loidhne 1:
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Habemus infinitivum necne
 
  
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No, not showing off, I had to ask a friend to correct my Latin (it's been a long time!) and there's a reason for the Latin name to the page. Here's a clue, it loosely translates as ''We have an infinitive, or do we?''.
 
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==First things first==
 
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What's an infinitive and would it go with a glass of Château Musar? Probably as to the latter. As to the former, it's actually hard to say what it exactly is because the definition of ''the infinitive'' varies slightly depending on which language you're looking at.
 
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Coming at it from English, the infinitive is often described as the ''dictionary form'' (also called the ''citation form'') - for example ''to go'' or, dropping the ''to'', simply ''go''. It gets more complicated than that but I want to sidestep the definition of what the infinitive precisely is in English because it's a bit of a head-bender (and that's me you're talking to!) - plus it's not really a helpful concept for Gaelic as we'll see.
 
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So anyway, this thing called the infinitive crops up in many European languages. For example in Spanish, the basic form of verbs (those ending in ''-ir, ''-er'' or ''-ar'') is referred to as the infinitive (this also being the form you look for in the dictionary). For example ''morir'' "(to) die" or ''masticar'' "(to) chew". In German, the equivalent is ''-en'', for example ''bedienen'' "(to) serve" or ''verniedlichen'' "(to) make cute". And so on.
 
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==What's the attraction?==
 
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Well... the infinitive is the basis for inflection on the whole (if the language in question inflects the language). Ignoring irregular verbs, if in English you know ''(to) place'' then you know that by adding ''-(e)d'' you get the past, by adding ''-(e)s'' you get the he/she/it form (''he/she/it places'') and by adding ''-ing'' you get the participle (''placing'').
 
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You can also use them to make ungrammatical but somewhat intelligible sentences if you're not fluent. So something like ''I place money here yesterday'' or ''Ich lesen Buch'', while not grammatical, can be understood. Which is why the infinitive is one of the first verb forms learners of English, German, Spanish or French learn, it allows you to say a lot relatively fast.
 
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==What about languages which are not English?==
 
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Depends. Some languages outside the Indo-European family entertain the idea of an infinitive. Others go even further and don't inflect at all - such as Cantonese where the verb 生 (''sāng'' "to give birth) does not change at all. No endings, no prefixes, no suffixes, no he/she/it -s ... nothing like that. You can add a word like 咗 (''jó'') to indicate that this was in the past but ''jó'' is seen as an independent word, not part of ''sāng''.
 
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And then there are languages which entertain neither concept. Many Native American languages have nothing even approaching an English infinitive, as in, something that is wholly un-inflected, un-changed and basic. So what happens in a Lakhóta dictionary then, you might ask? No sweat. Lakhóta considers the most basic form of a verb to be the 3rd person singular. So while an English dictionary will list ''(to) sing'', Lakhóta will list ''lowáŋ'' "he/she/it sings". Because if you look at the whole shebang, you'll see this is the form with the least amount of 'bits' stuck ok:
 
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{| class="wikitable"
 
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|-
 
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| walowáŋ
 
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| I sing
 
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|-
 
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| yalowáŋ
 
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| you sing
 
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|-
 
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| lowáŋ
 
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| he/she/it sings
 
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|-
 
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| uŋlowáŋ
 
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| we two sing
 
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|-
 
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| uŋlowáŋpi
 
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| we (more than two) sing
 
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|-
 
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| yalowáŋpi
 
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| you (plural) sing
 
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|-
 
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| lowáŋpi
 
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| they sing
 
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|-
 
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|}
 
  
  
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d' fhaicinn-sa vs thusa fhaicinn
  
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* weird stuff
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di-theine, di-theallaich
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di-beatha, di-beathte
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de-theodha
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de-tibheach (i-tibheach, le-tibheach...)
  
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* words with strange semantic ranges (usually from English perspective)
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amasach
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càirdeas
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cearrachd
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eug-samhail
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fàsach
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fulangach
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grìosad
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guidhe
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sonn
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toirteil
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bho chionn goirid
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astar
  
 
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1"
 
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1"

Mùthadh on 12:54, 20 dhen Mhàrt 2019


d' fhaicinn-sa vs thusa fhaicinn

  • weird stuff

di-theine, di-theallaich di-beatha, di-beathte de-theodha de-tibheach (i-tibheach, le-tibheach...)

  • words with strange semantic ranges (usually from English perspective)

amasach càirdeas cearrachd eug-samhail fàsach fulangach grìosad guidhe sonn toirteil bho chionn goirid astar

Sortable table
Alphabetic Numeric Date Unsortable
d 20 2008-11-24 This
b 8 2004-03-01 column
a 6 1979-07-23 cannot
c 4 1492-12-08 be
e 0 1601-08-13 sorted.
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