Appendix:Old Irish class B IV present verbs
Old Irish class B IV verbs (Strachan's A2; McCone's S3 with e vocalism) are derived from Proto-Celtic verbs ending in *-nati, from Proto-Indo-European athematic verbs with a nasal infix before a laryngeal (singular *-né-H-ti, plural *-n-H-énti). They correspond to Ancient Greek verbs ending in -νημι (-nēmi) and to Sanskrit class 9 verbs (e.g. क्रीणाति (krīṇāti, “to buy”), which corresponds exactly to Old Irish crenaid (“to buy”)). The stem-final n is always non-palatalized, and exists only in the present stem; there is no n in the future, subjunctive, or preterite stems of these verbs.
The inflection is almost identical to that of class B I, subtype S1c (canaid type) except that the n remains nonpalatalized even when word-final and B IV shares the first-person singular absolute and conjunct -aim and the second-person singular conjunct -ai with the weak verbs.
Basic pattern
[edit]A sample verb of this subclass is benaid (“to strike”). The endings are as follows (note that several of the endings are delenited after the root-final n):
| 1st sg. | 2nd sg. | 3rd sg. | 1st pl. | 2nd pl. | 3rd pl. | Passive singular | Passive plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute | benaim | benai | benaid | benmai | bentae | benait | benair | bentair |
| Conjunct | ·benaim* | ·benai | ·ben | ·benam | ·ben[a]id | ·benat | ·benar | ·bentar |
| Relative | benas | benmae | bentae | benar | bentar | |||
| *The strong form (endingless with u-affection) is found in for·fiun from for·fen. | ||||||||
| 1st sg. | 2nd sg. | 3rd sg. | 1st pl. | 2nd pl. | 3rd pl. | Passive singular | Passive plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ·benainn | ·benta | ·benad | ·benmais | ·bentae | ·bentais | ·bentae | ·bentais |
| 2nd sg. | 3rd sg. | 1st pl. | 2nd pl. | 3rd pl. | Passive singular | Passive plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ben | benad | benam | benaid | benat | benar | bentar |
Further reading
[edit]- McCone, Kim (1997) The Early Irish Verb (Maynooth Monographs 1), 2nd edition, Maynooth: An Sagart, →ISBN, page 31
- Strachan, John, Bergin, Osborn (1949) Old-Irish Paradigms and Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, →ISBN, pages 34–43
- Thurneysen, Rudolf (1940) D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, transl., A Grammar of Old Irish, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, →ISBN, pages 356, 378–79; reprinted 2017