9
the nominative case preceded by the article, i.e., if the noun be feminine, the m aspirates and the s prefixes t; (2), that nouns beginning with f, preceded by the preposition without the article, often resist aspiration. The rules given here and below are based on a very large number of examples, only a small portion of which can be quoted.
AG.
Ag appears generally in the pronominal form, aige, which is contracted to ’ge.
Ag followed by the article and plural noun prefixes s to the article, e.g., ’ge sna daoine.
Before verbal nouns beginning with a consonant it becomes a’, if the word immediately preceding it ends in a consonant, e.g., ṫá Seán a’ dul, but if the word ends in a vowel the ag completely disappears, e.g., ṫá sé dul; before verbal nouns beginning with a vowel it becomes ’g and unites with the verbal noun to form a single word, if the preceding word ends in a vowel, e g., ṫá sé ’g’iṫe; but if the preceding word ends in a consonant it remains ag, e.g., ṫá Seán ag iṫe.
Ag compounded with pronouns takes the following forms, agam″, agut″, aige″, aici″, againn″, agaiḃ″, acu.″ We should write ag-inn″, ag-iḃ″ to be quite accurate, but it was thought better to avoid special forms of spelling in words whose pronunciation is probably well-known to the reader. The initial a is frequently omitted.
Ag combined with possessive pronouns becomes ’gem, at my; ’ge-t (before vowels), ’ge-d (before consonants), at thy; ’ge-n-a or gea, at his, hers, theirs; ’ge-n-ár, at our; ’ge ḃur, at your.
Ag, followed by the article and noun in the singular, eclipses. If the noun begins with c or p it aspirates.
