Morphology
Manx nouns fall into one of two genders, masculine or feminine. Nouns are inflected for number (the plural being formed in a variety of ways, most commonly by addition of the suffix -yn ), but usually there is no inflection for case, except in a minority of nouns that have a distinct genitive singular form, which is formed in various ways (most common is the addition of the suffix -ey to feminine nouns). Historical genitive singulars are often encountered in compounds even when they are no longer productive forms; for example thie-ollee "cowhouse" uses the old genitive of ollagh "cattle".
Manx verbs generally form their finite forms by means of periphrasis: inflected forms of the auxiliary verbs ve "to be" or jannoo "to do" are combined with the verbal noun of the main verb. Only the future, conditional, preterite, and imperative can be formed directly by inflecting the main verb, but even in these tenses, the periphrastic formation is more common in Late Spoken Manx. Examples:
| Tense | Periphrastic form (literal translation) |
Inflected form | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | ta mee tilgey (I am throwing) |
– | I throw |
| Imperfect | va mee tilgey (I was throwing) |
– | I was throwing |
| Perfect | ta mee er tilgey (I am after throwing) |
– | I have thrown |
| Pluperfect | va mee er tilgey (I was after throwing) |
– | I had thrown |
| Future | neeym tilgey (I will do throwing) |
tilgym | I will throw |
| Conditional | yinnin tilgey (I would do throwing) |
hilgin | I would throw |
| Preterite | ren mee tilgey (I did throwing) |
hilg mee | I threw |
| Imperative | jean tilgey! (Do throwing!) |
tilg! |
Throw! |
The future and conditional tenses (and in some irregular verbs, the preterite) make a distinction between "independent" and "dependent" forms. Independent forms are used when the verb is not preceded by any particle; dependent forms are used when a particle (e.g. cha "not") does precede the verb. For example, "you will lose" is caillee oo with the independent form caillee ("will lose"), while "you will not lose" is cha gaill oo with the dependent form caill (which has undergone eclipsis to gaill after cha). Similarly "they went" is hie ad with the independent form hie ("went"), while "they did not go" is cha jagh ad with the dependent form jagh. This contrast is inherited from Old Irish, which shows such pairs as beirid ("(s)he carries") vs. ní beir ("(s)he does not carry"), and is found in Scottish Gaelic as well, e.g. gabhaidh ("will take") vs. cha ghabh ("will not take"). In Modern Irish, the distinction is found only in irregular verbs (e.g. chonaic ("saw") vs. ní fhaca ("did not see").
Like the other Insular Celtic languages, Manx has so-called inflected prepositions, contractions of a preposition with a pronominal direct object. For example, the preposition ec "at" has the following forms:
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| First person | aym ("at me") | ain ("at us") | |
| Second person | ayd ("at you") | eu ("at you") | |
| Third person | Masculine | echey ("at him") | oc ("at them") |
| Feminine | eck ("at her") | ||
Read more about this topic: Manx Language
Famous quotes containing the word morphology:
“I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language.... To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)