Normal Word Order
The normal word order in an Irish sentence is:
- Preverbal particle
- Verb
- Subject
- Direct object or predicate adjective
- Indirect object
- Location descriptor
- Manner descriptor
- Time descriptor
Only the verb and subject are obligatory; all other parts are optional (unless the primary or finite verb is transitive, in which case a direct object is required). In synthetic verb forms, the verb and subject are united in a single word, so that even one-word sentences are possible, e.g. Tuigim "I understand."
An example sentence:
| Labhraíonn | Mícheál | Gaeilge | le Cáit | go minic. |
| speaks | Mícheál | Irish | with Cáit | often |
| Verb | Subject | Dir.obj. | Ind.obj. | Time |
| "Mícheál speaks Irish with Cáit often." | ||||
Read more about this topic: Irish Syntax
Famous quotes containing the words normal, word and/or order:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustained ... the science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle’s treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)