3 research outputs found
Aspects of Verbal Noun Constructions in Medieval Irish and Welsh With Reference to Similar Constructions in Basque
This study provides a survey of the constructions of verbal nouns with prepositions
that are used in a significant way, such as creating syntactic and
semantic contexts not found with ordinary nouns. Particular emphasis is
placed on constructions serving to denote tense, mood and aspect. Also some
syntactic contexts involving verbal nouns as objects are examined. This material
has been collected primarily from Old and Middle Irish texts, but some
reference is made to Modern Irish where this seems helpful in order to illustrate
developments. The observations made are compared to findings on the
use of verbal nouns in a closely related language, Middle Welsh, and an
unrelated, non-Indo-European language, Basque. The discussion of the Medieval
Irish material is followed by the evaluation of an illustrative corpus of
Middle Welsh data and available descriptions of Welsh verbal nouns. Parallel
constructions in these Insular Celtic languages are then brought together
in order to assess which prepositional verbal noun constructions might have
been a feature of Insular Celtic. Data from Basque is compared to the findings
for Insular Celtic. The results seek to identify the language specific
features of Old Irish verbal nouns and a common core of verbal noun usage
in Insular Celtic as opposed to other usages adopted by a non-Indo-European
sample language