Irish Syntax - Normal Word Order

Normal Word Order

The normal word order in an Irish sentence is:

  1. Preverbal particle
  2. Verb
  3. Subject
  4. Direct object or predicate adjective
  5. Indirect object
  6. Location descriptor
  7. Manner descriptor
  8. 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:

    Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    Our woods are sylvan, and their inhabitants woodmen and rustics; that is selvaggia, and the inhabitants are salvages. A civilized man, using the word in the ordinary sense, with his ideas and associations, must at length pine there, like a cultivated plant, which clasps its fibres about a crude and undissolved mass of peat.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There are instances when we are like horses, we psychologists, and grow restless: we see our own shadow wavering up and down before us. A psychologist must look away from himself in order to see anything at all.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)