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:
“Marriages will survive despite enormous strains. A lover will ask, “Is he happy? Can he still love her?” They don’t realise that’s not the point, it’s all the normal things they do together—going to the supermarket, choosing wallpaper, doing things with the children.”
—Carol Clewlow (b. 1947)
“I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)
“If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)