Talk:Welsh syntax/Archive 1

What needs to be done

This article is still missing elements of Welsh syntax, including quantifiers, subordination (which I am not comfortable writing a section on), passives, and impersonals. I will be grateful to anyone who can write these sections or improve the existing sections. But more importantly, I think the syntax and morphology articles are so interdependent that readers will not be able to make sense of the information in them without hopping back and forth. The ways I've thought of fixing this would require duplicating syntax information in the morphology article and vice-versa, although maybe that's preferrable to the current situation. Thoughts? Strad (talk) 04:08, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I've written a section on subordination modelled on the equivalent on the Irish syntax page - the two languages are extremely similar in how they work anyway, so it shouldn't be too bad a template to work from. YngNghymru (talk) 02:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The book, Welsh rules, I was told is useful on welsh grammar.Japhes5005 (talk) 14:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC) The passive is form by, "cael" followed by "possessive adjectives"+"verbnoun of the action involved": the bridge was built last year= cafodd y bont ei chodi llynedd.Japhes5005 (talk) 22:33, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

What's your point and what does your post contribute to improving the article? Garik (talk) 17:53, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Focus

As I understand from research, Welsh posseses a sentence structure that varies when a specific topic is to be stressed. I myself have trouble understanding how this work. It would be a nice idea to venture here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.114.72.184 (talk) 01:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Added a (for the moment relatively brief) section on focus. YngNghymru (talk) 01:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Correction and suggestions

The example "y lywodraeth" of lenition of a feminine noun after the article is wrong. The consonants "ll" and "rh" do not take part in lenition when this is concerned with gender or after the predicative "yn". "The government" is "y llywodraeth".

It is suggested that the difference between "welon ni gi" and "welon ni ddim ci" is due to "ddim" blocking lenition. There is I think a much simpler explanation. "Dim" is an indefinite noun meaning "nothing", and can be used in genitive phrases - "dim ci" is a noun phrase meaning "nothing of a dog". Objects of inflected verbs require lenition, thus "welon ni gi" and also "welon ni ddim ci" - in the latter case, it is "dim" which receives lenition. This suggestion also explains forms like "Welon ni ddim o'r ci", or "welon ni mo'r ci" when the object is definite. A phrase like "tudalen y llyfr" can only mean "the page of the book". If we wish to say "a page of the book" the form "tudalen o'r llyfr" must be used. Since "dim" is always indefinite, "nothing of the dog" can only be expressed by "dim o'r ci", hence "welon ni ddim o'r ci", with the object lenition, usually abbreviated to "welon ni mo'r ci". Ian Stirk (talk) 12:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

• It should be made clear that this article describes spoken Welsh (of a certain kind?) and that the examples, at least, will vary with the sort of Welsh spoken. At least, I'm not a speaker but I believe this is so. For example:
  • The preverbal particle is not found in formal Welsh as I understand it and it is not required in spoken Welsh. Where it is used, it may not be 'mi'. (And if it isn't used, of course, it won't cause mutation.)
    • "Rhoddais i lyfr da i dad Eleri ddoe." (3 mutations)
    • "Fe roddais i lyfr da i dad Eleri ddoe." (4 mutations)
• There's also "Buodd bws yn dod" although I do understand the temptation to omit this!
• "Welon ni gi?" means "Did we see a dog?". "We saw a dog" would be "Gwelon ni gi" or "Fe/Mi welon ni gi".
• "Diffoddwr dân" should be "diffoddwr tân" because "diffoddwr" is masculine. (I checked this in Cysgeir which also offers "taniwr" as an alternative. The BBC's online dictionary is likely to give the same results.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.6.117.146 (talk) 23:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

> The preverbal particle is not found in formal Welsh as I understand it ... And if it isn't used, of course, it won't cause mutation <

Just to clarify one or two points: not only is there is more than one preverbal particle in Welsh, but such preverbal particles as a (interrogative) and ni (negative) are very much part of literary, formal Welsh. They are, indeed, the very cause of the mutation of inflected verbs. "While preverbal particles in Welsh can frequently fail to be pronounced, the mutation they trigger typically remains." -- Preverbal particles in verb-initial languages: Dirk Bury, University College London 2004 [1].

"A ddaeth Peter?" (Did Peter come?) is formal; "Ddaeth Peter?" is informal -- despite the omission in the second instance of the preverbal particle, the verb is still mutated. The person who says "Godais i am saith" (I got up at seven) is similarly omitting a preverbal particle (here: mi/fe) but retaining the mutation it triggers. The formal language, because it dispenses with mi/fe in unemphatic affirmations, of course says "Codais" (unmutated) -- and there are also regions (in particular, Glamorgan and East Dyfed) where, for the same reason, the spoken language realizes that sentence as "Codais i am saith". It remains true, nevertheless, that wherever the literary language has preverbal particles that trigger mutations, these mutations will continue to be realized even in speech that omits the particles themselves. -- Picapica (talk) 11:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Confusion

Some statements are confusing; for example in "Relative clauses": "Note that because the object of a verbnoun is genitival, all periphrastic constructions take y", which is followed by an example which does not show the "y" (The y it does show is the definite article for the noun and not the relative pronoun). Also, in "syntactic complementisation" the nasal mutation of bod to mod is not explained. -- BudgieJane (talk) 18:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I got fed up that these things were still there (although the nasal mutation thing appeared in a different example) that I fixed them myself. Hope that's OK. BudgieJane (talk) 19:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Is Welsh syntax really very Indo-European at all?

The article begins with the words, "The syntax of the Welsh language shows a structure different in many respects from that of English, but still clearly of an Indo-European heritage."

The thing is, while Welsh is clearly of Indo-European heritage, I'm not sure that there's all that much evidence for this at all to be found in its syntactic structure. Let's take, for example, the elements of Welsh syntax mentioned in the article. Of these, VSO word order (like mutation, which is mainly syntactically triggered in Modern Welsh, but not mentioned in this article) is a feature of Celtic languages, but is quite unusual in the IE family generally (it's actually more common in Semitic languages). Pre-verbal particles, moreover, are not, I believe, typical of IE (they're also more typical of Semitic languages). Topic fronting and Welsh NP structure are similar to examples in other IE languages, but also of many other language families, so they are poor evidence for IE heritage (the genitive construction is more like Arabic Idafa than anything else I've seen). The Welsh periphrastic construction with bod has parallels elsewhere in IE languages, but these tend to be late developments, rather than inherited features, so they are again poor evidence. Like the word order, structure of relative clauses is rather un-IE, as far as I can see. Welsh verbal nouns are also not typically IE (indeed, like several other features, they're a bit more Semitic looking).

In other words, there's nothing mentioned in this article that is very good evidence at all for Welsh being an Indo-European language! It seems to share more with the Semitic family. Now, I'm not claiming for one moment that Welsh is not Indo-European, nor am I pushing the view that it shows significant Semitic influence (this is an intriguing possibility, argued for somewhat unconvincingly by Venneman; but it may all be coincidental). What I'm arguing is that there's very little evidence indeed to support the first sentence of this article. All the evidence I see for Welsh being Indo-European is lexical and morphological. garik (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Welsh isn't unique in its syntax though; Welsh syntax is thoroughly Insular Celtic, as everything you mention is found in the other Brythonic languages as well as the Goidelic languages. So it's really Insular Celtic syntax that may not be typically Indo-European. I think the more relevant question really is what does characterize the syntax of Indo-European languages? Word order? Outside of Insular Celtic, both SVO and SOV are widely attested among IE languages, and of course many IE languages (especially the older ones) have very free word order. There are both accusative languages and ergative languages in the family. There are languages with wh-fronting and languages with in-situ wh-words. I guess what I'm getting at is this: Welsh syntax is very typically Insular Celtic; Insular Celtic syntax is not very typically Indo-European, but then no other branch of Indo-European can be said to have typically Indo-European syntax either, because there's no such thing as typically Indo-European syntax. +Angr 21:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely. I meant to add, but apparently didn't, that Welsh is indeed typical of Insular Celtic. And you make a good point that no IE family is especially "typical". However you look at it, the first sentence of the article has no substance to it in this respect. garik (talk) 10:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Unreality

When "unreality" is stated in the list of tenses, is that intended to mean the passive voice? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.77.151.208 (talk) 19:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Please add new comments to the end of the page (I've taken the liberty of moving this myself). No, this doesn't refer to the passive voice. It's for a particular verb inflection that refers to things that are not the case. An example would be, "Pe taswn i'n byw ar y lleuad" ("If I lived on the moon"). garik (talk) 20:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Bod

Could Bod be use to make continuous tenses e.g rydw i wedi bod nofio= i have been swimming.Japhes5005 (talk) 17:39, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

If it's possible at all (and I don't know) I think it would have to be rydw i wedi bod yn nofio, to be parallel with rydw i’n nofio "I am swimming". Angr (talk) 21:05, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

In the Morden Welsh Dictionary, it has, "Since yn cannot be separated from its verbnoun by any other word; the particles yn and wedi, therefore, cannot be used with the same verbnoun.Japhes5005 (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

In my attempt above, they aren't used with the same verbal noun: it's wedi bod and yn nofio. Angr (talk) 19:08, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I asked the following question above, if Welsh, as in English could have a, present perfect continuous tense.Japhes5005 (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I can confirm that "Dw i wedi bod yn nofio" is perfectly good Welsh and is indeed equivalent in sense to "I've been swimming" (as compared with "dw i wedi nofio", which is equivalent to "I've swum".) You'll also note that I went for "dw i" instead of "rydw i" in my examples, the latter being somewhat more common in textbooks than native mouths. (Down south they say "wi".) Garik (talk) 00:57, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

In a Book called Welsh Rules, A welsh grammar for learners, it has: " We cannot say "Mae wedi bod damwain " (There was/has been an accident) but "Mae Damwain wedi bod"; I only just brought this book.--Japhes5005 (talk) 13:42, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

That is correct, but it's not relevant to your original question. Why do you bring it up? I should add that this page is not for questions about Welsh syntax. It's for discussions of how to improve the article. Garik (talk) 17:50, 14 July 2014 (UTC)