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Welsh Syntax
The syntax of the Welsh language has much in common with the syntax of other Insular Celtic languages. It is, for example, heavily right-branching (including a verb–subject–object word order), and the verb for ''be'' (in Welsh, ''bod'') is crucial to constructing many different types of clauses. Any verb may be inflected for three tenses (preterite, future, and unreality), and a range of additional tenses are constructed with auxiliary verbs and particles. Welsh lacks true subordinating conjunctions, and instead relies on special verb forms and preverbal particles to create subordinate clauses. There are at least four registers or varieties of Welsh that the term ''Modern Welsh'' is used to describe. There is ''Biblical Welsh'', which is archaic and not part of colloquial usage, although some educated Welsh speakers are familiar with it. Two more registers are ''Literary Welsh'' and ''Colloquial Welsh''; this article primarily describes Colloquial Welsh, except where noted. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insular Celtic Languages
Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, France. The Continental Celtic languages, although once quite widely spoken in continental Europe, mainland Europe and in Anatolia, are extinct. Six Insular Celtic languages are extant (in all cases written and spoken) in two distinct groups: * Brittonic languages, Brittonic (or Brythonic) languages: Breton language, Breton, Cornish language, Cornish, and Welsh language, Welsh * Goidelic languages: Irish language, Irish, Manx language, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic Insular Celtic hypothesis The "Insular Celtic hypothesis" is a theory that they historical linguistics, evolved together in those places, having a later common descent, common ancestor than any of the Continental Celtic languages such as Celtiberian language, Celtiberian, Gaulish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noun Phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type. Noun phrases often function as verb subjects and objects, as predicative expressions and as the complements of prepositions. Noun phrases can be embedded inside each other; for instance, the noun phrase ''some of his constituents'' contains the shorter noun phrase ''his constituents''. In some more modern theories of grammar, noun phrases with determiners are analyzed as having the determiner as the head of the phrase, see for instance Chomsky (1995) and Hudson (1990). Identification Some examples of noun phrases are underlined in the sentences below. The head noun appears in bold. ::This election-year's politics are annoying for many people. ::Almost every sentence contains at least one noun phrase. ::Current ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apposition
Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be ''in apposition'', and one of the elements is called the appositive, but its identification requires consideration of how the elements are used in a sentence. For example, in these sentences, the phrases ''Alice Smith'' and ''my sister'' are in apposition, with the appositive identified with italics: * My sister, ''Alice Smith'', likes jelly beans. * Alice Smith, ''my sister'', likes jelly beans. Traditionally, appositions were called by their Latin name ''appositio'', derived from the Latin ''ad'' ("near") and ''positio'' ("placement"), although the English form is now more commonly used. Apposition is a figure of speech of the scheme type and often results when the verbs (particularly verbs of being) in supporting clauses are eliminated to produce shorter descriptive phrases. Tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genitive
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses (see adverbial genitive). Genitive construction includes the genitive case, but is a broader category. Placing a modifying noun in the genitive case is one way of indicating that it is related to a head noun, in a genitive construction. However, there are other ways to indicate a genitive construction. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than the modifying noun) in the construct state. Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as a subset of genitive construction. For example, the genitive co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a particular point in time) and diachronically (as a language changes over time). Lenition can involve such changes as voicing a voiceless consonant, causing a consonant to relax occlusion, to lose its place of articulation (a phenomenon called ''debuccalization'', which turns a consonant into a glottal consonant like or ), or even causing a consonant to disappear entirely. An example of synchronic lenition is found in most varieties of American English, in the form of flapping: the of a word like ''wait'' is pronounced as the more sonorous in the related form ''waiting'' . Some varieties of Spanish show debuccalization of to at the end of a syllable, so that a word like "we are" is pronounced . An example of diachronic leniti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gender (linguistics)
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the ''genders'' of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Gender systems are used in approximately one half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh Morphology
The morphology of the Welsh language has many characteristics likely to be unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs inflect for person, number, tense, and mood, with affirmative, interrogative, and negative conjugations of some verbs. There is no case inflection in Modern Welsh. Modern Welsh can be written, and spoken, in several levels of formality, for example colloquial or literary, as well as different dialects. The grammar described in this article is for Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in the William Morgan's 1588 translation of the Bible and can be seen in formal writing. It does not reflect the spoken language presented here. Initial consonant mutation Initial consona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns. Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including ''the'', ''this'', ''my'', etc., typically are classed separately, as determiners. Here are some examples: * That's a funny idea. ( attributive) * That idea is funny. ( predicative) * * The good, the bad, and the funny. (substantive) Etymology ''Adjective'' comes from Latin ', a calque of grc, ἐπίθετον ὄνομα, epítheton ónoma, additional noun (whence also English ''epithet''). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns (a process called declension), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determiner (class)
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc. Common kinds of determiners include definite and indefinite articles (''the'', ''a''), demonstratives (''this'', ''that''), possessive determiners (''my,'' ''their''), cardinal numerals (''one'', ''two''), quantifiers (''many'', ''both''), distributive determiners (''each'', ''every''), and interrogative determiners (''which'', ''what''). Description Most determiners have been traditionally classed either as adjectives or pronouns, and this still occurs in traditional grammars: for example, demonstrative and possessi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verbnoun
In Celtic languages such as Welsh, a verb-noun (or verbnoun) is used to refer to the basic form of a verb and is the form usually listed in a dictionary (for example, in the 'Modern Welsh Dictionary'). In Welsh for example, it is frequently used in conjunction with an auxiliary verb to form a periphrastic verb. It is similar in meaning to an English '-ing participle' or gerund, although it is often translated as a 'to-infinitive'. See the article on verbal nouns for the term more generally used in grammatical descriptions. It is the verb form which functions as a noun, naming an "action or state without reference to who does it or when". It is often formed by the addition of a suffix to a verb stem, though its form is sometimes the same as that of the verb stem. For example, in the Manx language, "etl" is the verb stem (and imperative singular, as is usually the case in Celtic languages) corresponding to the English verb "fly". The verbnoun is formed by the addition of the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
