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154.Irish
1.Introduction
2.General overview
3.Composition
4.Derivation
5.Conversion
6.Backformation
7.Reduplication
8.Blending
9.Clipping
10.Word-creation
11.References
Abstract
The three most productive word-formation mechanisms in Irish (called Gaeilge in standard Irish) are a) prefixation, b) composition (with a small set of deadjectival and denominal premodifiers) and c) suffixation. Prefixation and composition are common only with nouns and adjectives as bases. The highly productive diminutive suffix -ín does not change the class of (mostly noun) bases. The category of the abstract comparative contains an intersection of the suffixes of both the inflectional comparative adjective and the derivational abstract noun. Many lexicalised phrases are important lexical items but are not considered as word-formation unless they show morphological signs of univerbation. Conversion is restricted, and blending and clipping are rare.
1.Introduction
Irish is the variety of Celtic spoken in Ireland. It is closely related to Scottish Gaelic. Both constitute the main members of the Goidelic subgroup which is the western sister of Brythonic (Welsh, Breton) within the Celtic language family. Accounts of Irish word- formation are found mostly in descriptive monographs. For Irish in general: Ó hAnluain (1999 [1960]: 136–137, 243–245, 266–267, 303–320). For particular dialects: County Kerry in Munster, Ó Sé (2000: 312–316, 385–386, 466–484); County Galway in Connacht, de Bhaldraithe (1953a: 130–132, 239–256) and Ó Curnáin (2007: 124–129, 564569, 582–656, 685–690, 892–898, 1075–1103, 1226, 1235–1249, 1254–1256, 17211724, 1803, 1875–1876, 2002–2013). These references include verbal-noun derivation. Indications of stress and phonetics in this article are from Ó Curnáin (2007) unless otherwise stated. Discussions of certain aspects of word-formation are: Armstrong (1981: 640–641, 653–706) and McManus (1994: 389–392) concerning the at times profligate prefixing and compounding in Classical Early Modern syllabic verse; de Bhaldraithe (1990) on diminutives (cf. de Bhaldraithe 1953b, a dialect list containing a thousand terms for types of people); County Waterford in Munster, Breatnach (1947: 79–82) regarding compound stress, County Cork in Munster, Ó Cuív (1944: 67–68) regarding compound stress, Ó hÚrdail (1995) on the preference for agentive -éir in South-West Co. Cork; Ní Dhomhnaill (1988) contains a list of alliterative doublets. Doyle (1992) is the only book-length analysis of Irish word-formation I know of, its subject is noun derivation (26–134) - abstract and activity nouns, agentives and diminutives - but it requires revision and improvement, in view, for example, of the data available in the valuable reverse dictionary of Doyle and Gussmann (1996).
Full traditional native speaker competence in Irish is only found among dialect speakers. These speakers have not acquired standard Irish in initial early language acquisition. This survey article, written by a non-native speaker to whom many of the words cited here are known only from dictionaries, will concentrate on the commonest productive use in dialects. The vitality-status of Irish as a threatened language is “semi-moribund” (Ó Curnáin 2012: 286) since c. 1990 because it is generally being incompletely acquired by native speakers born after c. 1990 who, through subtractive bilingualism, acquire greater proficiency in their second language, English (Ó Giollagáin et al. 2007: 303320; Ó Giollagáin and Mac Donncha 2008: 114–117; Péterváry et al. 2014). Productivity of word-formation refers in this article to the knowledge of traditional speakers, the most competent of whom were generally born before 1940. Post-traditional speech can be situated on a cline of reduction regarding phonology, morphology, lexicon and word- formation; for instance, the absence of the traditionally obligatory verbalising suffix -áil with current borrowings (Lenoach 2012; Ó Curnáin 2012). Thus, although this description is cast in the present tense, much is currently being lost and can, or soon will be, generally by c. 2050, more accurately described in the past tense. From the point of view of word-formation in standardised Irish, given state support of the neological enterprise (applied primarily in official documentation and education), Irish is one of, if not the best provided-for (semi-)moribund language in the world, exemplified in many praiseworthy lexicographical endeavours, for instance, Uí Bhraonáin and Nic Pháidín (2004) and the ongoing terminological project available on the website www.focal.ie (Nic Pháidín 2008: 105) and English-Irish dictionary at www.focloir.ie as well as the valuable corpus at corpas.focloir.ie. Irish is dying, so to speak, with its standardised terminological boots on, enabling some of its speakers and writers to deal with, deny, ignore or avoid the process of its death with greater sophistication than most speakers of dying languages (cf. Fishman 1991: 143).
2.General overview
David Greene (1966: 24–25, 30–31) provides an overview of many features of Irish relevant to word-formation:
[…] Irish resembles French more than English in that words cannot, in general, be transferred from one category to another; […]. The word has a structure which is common enough in other European languages; it can have one syllable (bean), two (bata), or three (airgead ‘money’, where a vowel is pronounced, but not written, between the middle consonants). Root words have seldom more than two syllables; when there are three or more syllables it usually means that we have a complex of som...
