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VERB: verb

Description

Verbs typically inflect for tense and mood. Verbs signal events and actions. Verbs can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause.

Irish is a VSO language, thus the verb comes first.

Irish verbs sometimes inflect for person in the form of synthetic verbs. (e.g. ithim “I eat”; ithimid “we eat”)

There are four moods: indicative, imperative, conditional and subjunctive. Tenses include present habitual, simple past, past habitual and future.

There is an autonomous verb form, which most closely correlates to the English passive. However it is not technically a passive form as the subject is “understood” and the nominal argument is an object (e.g. tugadh an liathróid dó “the ball was given to him” (lit. somebody gave the ball to him)).

Copula vs substantive verb ‘to be’

There are two translations of the English verb `to be’ in Irish:

These forms behave very differently syntactically, yet both are labelled with the tag VERB.

copula The copula construction follows a COP PRED SUBJ order. An example of copula use is identity constructions (equating two noun phrases). Is múinteoir é “he is a teacher”. The copula is also part of the frequently used cleft/ fronting construction. These constructions are often used to show emphasis. (e.g. Is leabhar a thug sí dom “It’s a book she gave me”).

substantive bí The substantive verb behaves just like normal Irish verbs. It inflects for person, number and tense. It can never be used for an identity construction with two noun phrases. If it is used for identity, it follows the pattern of Verb NP PP (e.g. sé ina mhúinteoir “he is a teacher” (lit. He is in his teacher)) The pattern followed here is: VERB SUBJ PRED

The substantive verb is also used in conjunction with a verbal noun to form progressive aspectual phrases. (e.g. sé ag rith “he is running” (lit. he is at running)).

Examples

Source: Studies in Irish Syntax. Nancy Stenson (1981), Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.


Treebank Statistics (UD_Irish)

There are 263 VERB lemmas (6%), 659 VERB types (11%) and 2301 VERB tokens (10%). Out of 16 observed tags, the rank of VERB is: 4 in number of lemmas, 3 in number of types and 4 in number of tokens.

The 10 most frequent VERB lemmas: bí, is, déan, cuir, tabhair, abair, tar, caith, feic, bain

The 10 most frequent VERB types: bhí, is, tá, raibh, atá, bhfuil, ba, gur, bheidh, beidh

The 10 most frequent ambiguous lemmas: is (VERB 379, PART 32), cuir (VERB 76, X 1), feic (VERB 30, NOUN 1), bain (VERB 29, ADJ 1), faigh (VERB 24, X 1), tóg (VERB 10, NOUN 1), dar (VERB 9, SCONJ 2, ADP 1), léirigh (VERB 9, NOUN 1), meas (VERB 9, NOUN 7), úsáid (NOUN 9, VERB 7)

The 10 most frequent ambiguous types: is (VERB 69, CONJ 40, PART 30, SCONJ 4), bhfuil (VERB 65, NOUN 1), ba (VERB 27, PART 1), gur (VERB 48, PART 39), (PART 28, VERB 18, NOUN 2), nach (PART 52, VERB 21), chuir (VERB 13, NOUN 1), níor (PART 9, VERB 3), ar (ADP 498, PART 12, VERB 9), dar (VERB 4, SCONJ 2)

Morphology

The form / lemma ratio of VERB is 2.505703 (the average of all parts of speech is 1.449988).

The 1st highest number of forms (39) was observed with the lemma “bí”: Bhíomar, Nílim, Tá’s, Táimid, Táthar, atá, atáimse, beadh, beidh, bheadh, bheidh, bheidís, bheifeá, bheimid, bhfuil, bhfuilimid, bhéidh, bhí, bhíodar, bhíodh, bhíonn, bhíos, bígí, bíodh, bíonn, fuil, mbeadh, mbeidh, mbeifear, mbeinn, mbínn, mbíodh, mbíonn, níl, nílirse, rabhas, rabhthas, raibh, tá.

The 2nd highest number of forms (28) was observed with the lemma “déan”: dhein, dhineann, dhéan, dhéanadh, dhéananna, dhéanfadh, dhéanfaidh, dhéanfainn, dhéanfar, dhéantar, dineadh, dintar, déan, déanaim, déanann, déanfaidh, déanfar, déanfidh, déantar, ndearna, ndearnadh, ndintar, ndéanann, ndéanfaidh, ndéanfar, ndéantar, rinne, rinneadh.

The 3rd highest number of forms (22) was observed with the lemma “cuir”: Chuiridís, Cuirfear, chuir, chuireadar, chuireadh, chuireann, chuireas, chuirfeadh, chuirtear, chuirtí, cuir, cuireadh, cuireann, cuirfead, cuirfidh, cuirfí, cuirtear, gcuireadh, gcuirfeadh, gcuirfinn, gcuirfí, gcuirtear.

VERB occurs with 13 features: ga-feat/Tense (2074; 90% instances), ga-feat/Mood (1893; 82% instances), ga-feat/Form (1196; 52% instances), ga-feat/VerbForm (390; 17% instances), ga-feat/Voice (250; 11% instances), ga-feat/Negative (208; 9% instances), ga-feat/PronType (150; 7% instances), ga-feat/Number (126; 5% instances), ga-feat/Person (124; 5% instances), ga-feat/Gender (3; 0% instances), ga-feat/Dialect (2; 0% instances), ga-feat/Case (1; 0% instances), ga-feat/PartType (1; 0% instances)

VERB occurs with 27 feature-value pairs: Case=Com, Dialect=Munster, Form=Ecl, Form=Emph, Form=Len, Form=VF, Gender=Masc, Mood=Cnd, Mood=Imp, Mood=Ind, Mood=Int, Mood=Sub, Negative=Neg, Number=Plur, Number=Sing, PartType=Comp, Person=1, Person=2, Person=3, PronType=Art, PronType=Dem, PronType=Rel, Tense=Fut, Tense=Past, Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Cop, Voice=Auto

VERB occurs with 126 feature combinations. The most frequent feature combination is Form=Len|Mood=Ind|Tense=Past (489 tokens). Examples: bhí, thug, tháinig, chuir, chuaigh, chaith, chonaic, tharla, bhain, ith

Relations

VERB nodes are attached to their parents using 16 different relations: ga-dep/root (655; 28% instances), ga-dep/acl:relcl (418; 18% instances), ga-dep/cop (369; 16% instances), ga-dep/advcl (235; 10% instances), ga-dep/ccomp (225; 10% instances), ga-dep/conj (160; 7% instances), ga-dep/csubj:cleft (133; 6% instances), ga-dep/csubj:cop (37; 2% instances), ga-dep/xcomp (28; 1% instances), ga-dep/parataxis (25; 1% instances), ga-dep/nmod (9; 0% instances), ga-dep/mark:prt (3; 0% instances), ga-dep/advmod (1; 0% instances), ga-dep/appos (1; 0% instances), ga-dep/case (1; 0% instances), ga-dep/compound (1; 0% instances)

Parents of VERB nodes belong to 14 different parts of speech: NOUN (695; 30% instances), ROOT (655; 28% instances), VERB (499; 22% instances), ADJ (185; 8% instances), ADP (101; 4% instances), PRON (78; 3% instances), PROPN (28; 1% instances), SCONJ (24; 1% instances), ADV (15; 1% instances), X (9; 0% instances), CONJ (8; 0% instances), PUNCT (2; 0% instances), DET (1; 0% instances), PART (1; 0% instances)

382 (17%) VERB nodes are leaves.

79 (3%) VERB nodes have one child.

339 (15%) VERB nodes have two children.

1501 (65%) VERB nodes have three or more children.

The highest child degree of a VERB node is 16.

Children of VERB nodes are attached using 31 different relations: ga-dep/nsubj (1370; 19% instances), ga-dep/nmod (1039; 14% instances), ga-dep/punct (1030; 14% instances), ga-dep/mark:prt (553; 8% instances), ga-dep/dobj (552; 8% instances), ga-dep/xcomp:pred (429; 6% instances), ga-dep/xcomp (417; 6% instances), ga-dep/advmod (312; 4% instances), ga-dep/mark (263; 4% instances), ga-dep/nmod:prep (259; 4% instances), ga-dep/ccomp (231; 3% instances), ga-dep/advcl (189; 3% instances), ga-dep/conj (185; 3% instances), ga-dep/cc (179; 2% instances), ga-dep/neg (82; 1% instances), ga-dep/nmod:tmod (37; 1% instances), ga-dep/compound (36; 0% instances), ga-dep/amod (30; 0% instances), ga-dep/nummod (29; 0% instances), ga-dep/case (26; 0% instances), ga-dep/parataxis (22; 0% instances), ga-dep/vocative (11; 0% instances), ga-dep/csubj:cleft (10; 0% instances), ga-dep/det (3; 0% instances), ga-dep/discourse (3; 0% instances), ga-dep/name (3; 0% instances), ga-dep/compound:prt (2; 0% instances), ga-dep/cop (2; 0% instances), ga-dep/csubj:cop (2; 0% instances), ga-dep/acl:relcl (1; 0% instances), ga-dep/foreign (1; 0% instances)

Children of VERB nodes belong to 15 different parts of speech: NOUN (2579; 35% instances), PUNCT (1030; 14% instances), PART (986; 13% instances), PRON (542; 7% instances), VERB (499; 7% instances), ADP (385; 5% instances), ADJ (279; 4% instances), SCONJ (253; 3% instances), CONJ (237; 3% instances), ADV (217; 3% instances), PROPN (216; 3% instances), X (55; 1% instances), NUM (22; 0% instances), DET (5; 0% instances), INTJ (3; 0% instances)


VERB in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]