Module talk:sga-nouns

@Rua The module allows +H to be added for terms that trigger "aspiration", but in Irish, "aspiration" is just an older term for lenition. Could you remove this possibility? Thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 08:36, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Aspiration is not the same as lenition as far as I know. Where lenition is caused by a word-final vowel, aspiration is caused by a lost word-final -s and triggers prefixing a h- to the next word. —Rua (mew) 10:53, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: That's not called aspiration in Irish, though. (But the parallel mutation is called aspirate mutation in Welsh.) For modern Irish we call it h-prothesis, and for Old Irish we don't call it anything because it isn't indicated in the orthography, so learners don't have to worry about it. (And indeed we aren't 100% certain in all cases whether it applies in a certain environment in Old Irish or not, because some constructions didn't survive to the point where the /h/ started getting written more or less consistently.) And even in modern Irish there's no h-prothesis between a noun form and a following adjective (na mná áille (“the beautiful women / of the beautiful woman”), not *na mná háille. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:20, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Ok, but in any case, +H indicates a real grammatical phenomenon in Old Irish, and it's distinct from lenition regardless of what it's called, so it shouldn't be removed. What do you suggest changing instead? —Rua (mew) 17:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

It's a real grammatical phenomenon in some contexts, but there's no evidence it applied in the context that this template concerns (between a noun and an adjective). It might have applied there, but there's no evidence that it did, and even if it did, the mutation disappeared in this environment before it started getting written down in the environments where it survived. I think it should just be removed from this module/template. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:50, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Both w:Old Irish grammar and Sengoídelc: Old Irish for beginners use the H symbol. Why would it be used in such sources if it didn't mean anything? —Rua (mew) 17:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

You yourself seem to be the primary author of Old Irish grammar, so that article presumably uses it because Stifter does. But now I've reread what Thurneysen has to say about it (he calls it "gemination" rather than "aspiration") and I concede that there is some evidence from place names (as well as the surname element Ó) that Old Irish had h-prothesis between nouns and adjectives in some cases at least. So I guess the +H can stay, though I still dislike the term "aspiration" since that's exactly the term that many other works use to refer to lenition in Modern Irish. Thurneysen's "gemination" is also bad since nothing actually gets geminated. I'm in favor of calling it "h-prothesis", same as for modern Irish, the only disadvantage being that the /h/ is purely phonological and not orthographic, which may confuse some readers. But then there's not much about Old Irish grammar that won't confuse some readers. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:31, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

If h is not an aspiration, I don't know what else to call it. "H-prothesis" is misleading because the effect was not just limited to adding h, on vowel-initial words. "Gemination" on the other hand is misleading for exactly the opposite reason. The effect is really a combination of h-prothesis and gemination, with the result depending on what the next word starts with. Phonetically, the gemination is a result of a cluster VsC, while h-prothesis is from VsV. —Rua (mew) 18:37, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Phonologically there is no gemination, at least not synchronically in Old Irish. The only effect on consonant-initial words is the absence of lenition. Wim Tigges in An Old Irish Primer refers to it simply as "Non-lenition", which is probably as good a name as it can be given. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:55, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

There are many forms that don't trigger lenition, and not all of them fall into this category, so that's definitely not a good name. —Rua (mew) 20:18, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Ranke de Vries, A Student's Companion to Old Irish Grammar (→ISBN, apparently self-published) calls it "H-mutation", which has the same advantages and disadvantages as "H-prothesis". —Mahāgaja · talk 06:43, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Well in any case, I don't think there is a single name that really describes the phenomenon, but you can always edit {{sga-decl-noun-table}} yourself to change the description. Given that different people use different names, it may be useful to list several names in the template. —Rua (mew) 10:42, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

At some point I'll write Appendix:Old Irish mutations (to parallel Appendix:Irish mutations) and then link to that appendix from the template. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:38, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Looking at w:Old Irish grammar (which I totally forgot I had written, btw), it uses the combined term "aspiration and gemination". What do you think of that? —Rua (mew) 10:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't actually write that article, I just imported it from w:Old Irish and then made changes. —Rua (mew) 11:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)