Old Irish edit

Etymology edit

From ess- + Proto-Celtic *guseti (compare do·goa), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵews-. The prefix is often replaced with ad-.

The derivation is very complicated. The following account of how the -si suffix appeared in Old Irish is implied by KPV:[1]

  • The expected present forms would include asa·gú throughout the singular. This made all three persons in the singular identical in form (a situation unusual in Old Irish verbs), leading to multiple strategies arising to distinguish the third-person singular from the other persons. This included adding notae augentes particles to the end of the conjugated verb (like -si), and forming a new weak A II denominative verb from a hypothetical *-tis noun relative *gustis. The two strategies would hybridize to create the weak present as(a)·gúsi.
  • The future forms are analogical after gníid (to do).

Pronunciation edit

Verb edit

asa·gúsi (verbal noun aicsu)

  1. to desire, wish
  2. to choose, select
  3. to prefer

For quotations using this term, see Citations:asagúsi.

Conjugation edit

Mutation edit

Old Irish mutation
Radical Lenition Nasalization
asa·gúsi asa·gúsi
pronounced with /-ɣ(ʲ)-/
asa·ngúsi
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every
possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

References edit

  1. ^ Schumacher, Stefan; Schulze-Thulin, Britta (2004) Die keltischen Primärverben: ein vergleichendes, etymologisches und morphologisches Lexikon [The Celtic Primary Verbs: A comparative, etymological and morphological lexicon] (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft; 110) (in German), Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, →ISBN, pages 356-361

Further reading edit