Plé catagóire:Leathanaigh le chumasc

Latest comment: 17 bliain ó shin by Panu Petteri Höglund

"Le cumasc", not "le chumasc". The latter is ungrammatical. Panu Petteri Höglund 13:13, 4 Meitheamh 2007 (UTC) Gabh mo leithscéal, is mise a rinne an t-athrú sin. But is the version with the ellipsis possibly a valid dialectical variant? I formed it on analogy with "le dhéanamh" which I've found in various places I would consider trustworthy like government acts: [1]. --Gabriel Beecham 14:23, 4 Meitheamh 2007 (UTC)Reply

For the first, it is not eclipsis [sic!], that would be "le ndéanamh" - it is lenition. No, it is definitely not dialectal usage, and I am terribly sorry, but government acts are not among the most trustworthy places to look for good Irish, as it seems. "Le" does add a h- to VOWELS: le hól, le hoscailt, le héirí, and so on. But the rule is, that if something adds an initial h- to vowels, it never lenites a consonant. (Note that a "her" is a case in point: a háit "her place", a carr "her car", cf. a "his": a áit "his place", a charr "his car".)
Of course, there are other ways to construct it, where the lenition would be called for: "lena dhéanamh" ("for its doing", i.e. in order to do it) and "le hé a dhéanamh" ("for it to do", i.e. in order to do it), with the object mentioned either as possessive adjective (-[n]a "his, its" added to "le") or as explicit accusative pronoun (é). I don't quite know how to explain that barbarism "le dhéanamh", but I reckon the "le dhéanamh" might have been influenced by the construction "lé dhéanamh", which is poetic or archaic (instead of adding to the preposition "le" as -"na", the possessive adjective has lengthened the e of le into é, and this lé then causes the same initial mutation as "a" alone would) - you might encounter "lé dhéanamh" in the works of, say, Art Mac Cumhthaigh or Peadar Ó Doirnín, but not in modern standard prose.
It is another story that you do encounter such constructions as "le n-é a dhéanamh", "le n-ól" and so on in Gaeltacht literature (notably Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin). These are due to contamination (mixing) of the two historically correct constructions "lena dhéanamh" and "le hé a dhéanamh". I tend to see "le n-é a dhéanamh" and "le n-ól" as colloquial, but they are quite widespread, and I might use them myself when not fully attentive. Panu Petteri Höglund 19:34, 4 Meitheamh 2007 (UTC)Reply
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