Polarity: whether the word can be or is negated
There is no word for “yes” or “no” in Irish. Instead, a negative particle is used in combination with the verb to give a negative polarity.
Neg : negative
The negative particle ní* can be used in almost every tense, except the past. It causes lenition to relevant consonants (see Form), otherwise there is no change. In the past tense the particle is written as níor, and does not trigger any further lenition, though the word may already be lenited due to past tense morphology (see Tense).
*In the Ulster dialect, this particle also appears as cha (see Dialect)
Examples
- Ní thuigim “I don’t understand”
- Níor ól sé “He didn’t drink”
The interrogative negative particle nach is used to pose a negative question, or to introduce a clausal complement (see PartType).
Examples
- Nach bhfuil tú? “Aren’t you?”
- Dhaoine nach ndearna scannán riamh “People who haven’t ever made a film”
The verb “to be” (in Irish bí) is given the negative form níl in the present tense, as a contraction of ní bhfuil. It can inflect to show (for instance) person.
Examples
- Níl sé sin mí-réasúnta “That is not unreasonable”
- Ach nílirse sásta “But you aren’t happy”
Treebank Statistics (UD_Irish)
This feature is language-specific.
It occurs with 1 different values: Neg.
225 tokens (2%) have a non-empty value of Polarity.
54 types (1%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Polarity.
34 lemmas (1%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Polarity.
The feature is used with 4 part-of-speech tags: ga-pos/PART (98; 1% instances), ga-pos/VERB (75; 1% instances), ga-pos/AUX (49; 0% instances), ga-pos/X (3; 0% instances).
PART
98 ga-pos/PART tokens (11% of all PART tokens) have a non-empty value of Polarity.
The most frequent other feature values with which PART and Polarity co-occurred: PartType=Vb (76; 78%), PronType=EMPTY (76; 78%).
PART tokens may have the following values of Polarity:
Neg(98; 100% of non-emptyPolarity): nach, ní, níor, nár, ná, n’
VERB
75 ga-pos/VERB tokens (7% of all VERB tokens) have a non-empty value of Polarity.
The most frequent other feature values with which VERB and Polarity co-occurred: Mood=Ind (70; 93%), Voice=EMPTY (68; 91%), Form=Len (52; 69%), Tense=Past (38; 51%).
VERB tokens may have the following values of Polarity:
Neg(75; 100% of non-emptyPolarity): raibh, níl, bheidh, bhfuil, bhain, mbeidh, bhfuair, bhraitheann, bhíonn, chailleann
Polarity seems to be lexical feature of VERB. 100% lemmas (25) occur only with one value of Polarity.
AUX
49 ga-pos/AUX tokens (22% of all AUX tokens) have a non-empty value of Polarity.
The most frequent other feature values with which AUX and Polarity co-occurred: VerbForm=Cop (49; 100%), Form=EMPTY (46; 94%), PronType=EMPTY (40; 82%), Tense=Pres (34; 69%).
AUX tokens may have the following values of Polarity:
Neg(49; 100% of non-emptyPolarity): ní, nach, níor, nár, níorbh, nárbh
X
3 ga-pos/X tokens (2% of all X tokens) have a non-empty value of Polarity.
The most frequent other feature values with which X and Polarity co-occurred: Abbr=EMPTY (3; 100%), PronType=EMPTY (3; 100%), Dialect=Munster (2; 67%).
X tokens may have the following values of Polarity:
Neg(3; 100% of non-emptyPolarity): dein, cha
Relations with Agreement in Polarity
The 10 most frequent relations where parent and child node agree in Polarity:
VERB –[advmod]–> PART (36; 73%),
X –[advmod]–> PART (2; 100%),
VERB –[obj]–> PART (1; 100%),
X –[conj]–> X (1; 100%).
Polarity in other languages: [u]