Nagging grammar question

[Héilics Órbhuí]

“ag su solais na greine”
or
“ag su solas na greine” ?

I would assume the first, but I know the rules on genitives following verbal nouns are weird if there are other qualifiers (at least this is the case according to Nualeargas).

[Labhrás]

“ag su solais na greine”
or
“ag su solas na greine” ?

I would assume the first, but I know the rules on genitives following verbal nouns are weird if there are other qualifiers (at least this is the case according to Nualeargas).

ionsú sholas na gréine (the absorption of the sunlight, ionsú mar ainmfhocal gnách) a déarfainnse.
Ach:
Tá X ag ionsú solas na gréine. (X is absorbing the sunlight, ionsú mar ainm briathartha)

Ní cheart “solais na gréine” a úsáid, ceapaim.

[Héilics Órbhuí]

The verb “sú” is the appropriate one for what I wanted to say. The phrase “ag sú na gréine” is very common. I was simply putting “solas” in there to illustrate the genitive construction using the verbal noun.

Thanks for the answers to the actual question. 😉

I don’t really understand the reason for the initial consonant mutation, but I’ll have to do some reading about that. I did try to find the answer to the other question in books and couldn’t, so that was the one that was nagging me.

[Héilics Órbhuí]

That makes sense, I guess somewhere in my self-education I missed the rule about lenition indicating a definite noun. Lenition in general seems to be the most regionally variable aspect of the Irish language, so I tend to treat certain examples as I encounter them with a grain of salt, chalking them up to dialect, but in this case it looks like I have missed out on a fine point of grammar. But it makes sense, especially knowing already that names are lenited (i.e. teach Sheáin). The older construction (solais na gréine) is the one that seemed more intuitive to me, but it looks like I could have probably got away with some of my dignity if I said that in conversation (and I am sure your hypothesis about the development of that is correct). Thanks.

[Author]

Posts