http://stravaiger.com/blog/tags/particple/ Recent content in Particple on eBothy Blog Hugo en-us Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://stravaiger.com/blog/2009/02/07/verbal-nouns-and-the-infinitive-lets-climb/ Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://stravaiger.com/blog/2009/02/07/verbal-nouns-and-the-infinitive-lets-climb/ <p>I thought I'd cover this quite difficult topic while I sit out the blizzards that sweep majestically across the landscape. Why is it difficult? Well, there are three ways of handing this but first let's see what I mean by "verbal noun" and "infinitive".</p> <h1>The basics</h1> <h3>Type 1 : participle</h3> <p>I am climbing - "climbing" is a verbal noun. It's a verb used as a noun. In Gaelic, this is known as the "participle" construction, as it uses a particple, funnily enough. You use it when you can insert "in the act of" before the main verb and it still makes sense:</p> <p>Tha mi a'streap (I am <em>IN THE ACT OF</em> climbing) - where a' is short for aig (at). Literally it means "I am at climbing".</p> <h3>Type 2 : infinitive</h3> <p>I am going to climb - "to climb" is the infinitive of the verb "climb". This uses the infinitive construction as the verb preceding the main verb is a verb of motion (go, came etc). You can also see that testing for the particple makes no sense: I am going to IN THE ACT OF climb!</p> <p>"Tha mi a'dol a streap". Note that the first verb is using the participle construction (a'dol, I am IN THE ACT OF going) but the main verb doesn't. It's in the infinitive, "a streap". The way you tell the particple from the infinitive is the presence of a' in the particple, whereas it's "a" in the infinitive.</p> <h3>Type 3 : nominal</h3> <p>The third way is called the nominal and it's used where the other two aren't. In this case, there's no "a" or "a'" before the main verb:</p> <p>"Tha mi ag iarraidh streap" - I want to climb. Again, "I am wanting IN THE ACT OF to climb" makes no sense, so it's not participle and there's no verb of motion to make it infinitive, so it's nominal. Here, "to climb" is translated as "streap". As it's not precedeed by a verb of motion, there's no "a" in front of it.