Quantifiers

[Cymro]

I looked around at various resources to find various ways to quantify nouns in Gaelic.

I put together the list below:

enough houses : taighean go leòr
too many houses : cus thaighean
several houses : iomadh taigh
many houses : móran thaighean
a lot of houses : tòrr thaighean
a couple of houses : caigeann thaighean
a few houses : beagan thaighean
a few houses : deannan thaighean
all the houses : na taighean uile
each house : gach taigh
every house : a h-uile taigh

If there are any errors in the list, please let me know.

Thanks!

Cymro

[An Gobaire]

enough houses : taighean go leòr
too many houses : cus thaighean
several houses : iomadh taigh
many houses : móran thaighean
a lot of houses : tòrr thaighean
a couple of houses : caigeann thaighean
a few houses : beagan thaighean
a few houses : deannan thaighean
all the houses : na taighean uile
each house : gach taigh
every house : a h-uile taigh

Good effort.

I would suggest the following changes:

enough houses : gu leòr (de) thaighean (taighean gu leòr has a very positive connotation - the meaning is that there are plenty of houses; whereas having gu leòr before thaighean is more neutral)
several houses : grunn thaighean (iomadh/iomadach means "many")
a couple of houses : dà thaigh (caigeann is used in special cases, it's not that common in this sense. Càraid thaighean would be preferred colloquially but not so common, though perfectly correct.); perhaps we might adopt the Irish "cupla" as a loan word in the future...!)

[faoileag]

What about blocked lenition? (n > t)

grunn taighean / mòran taighean etc?

[An Gobaire]

Good point. Doesn't apply to the plural genitive though. You get it with seann taigh, seann duine, Clann Dòmhnaill etc but not here.

[GunChleoc]

Good point. Lenition for the plural genitive is "inherent", so I don't think it gets blocked.

càraid thaighean means a couple literally, so there would be 2 of them.

For a couple or a few in the general sense, you could also say taigh no dhà

[akerbeltz]

Historically, lenition would have been blocked i.e. mòran taighean vs mòran chaileagan. But that's going back a good 100+ years I'd say. Today mòran/grunn etc are not words blocking lenition anymore.

[Cymro]

Regarding 'enough' without the use of the preposition 'de', is the noun in the genitive?

gu leòr fhir, go leòr chon, gu leòr bhòrd etc. ?

Or in the nominative?

=========================

Regarding 'enough' with the use of the preposition 'de', I understand that the noun will be lenited.
As these then correct?:

go leòr de dh'airgead
go leòr de dh'ùbhlan
go leòr de bhailtean-mòra
go leòr de choin
go leòr de chàirdean
go leòr de chaileagan
go leòr de thaighean
go leòr de fhir
go leòr de dhaoine
go leòr de bhùird
go leòr de bhoireannaich
go leòr de phàistean
go leòr de bhalaich

Thanks,

Cymro

[An Gobaire]

Genitive

[akerbeltz]

No, definitely not the genitive. De (and its reduced form a) lenite but are followed by the nominative (singular or plural as appropriate to what you're saying). So your examples are all correct.

[Seonaidh]

Sure about nominative? In Latin, it would probably be "accusative" (not that modern Gaelic really has such a case at all nowadays, though Irish still has a faint trace of it), Would the case not actually be "prepositional", i.e. what we usually call "dative"? This case too - apart from a few fossilised forms - is indistinguishable from the "nominative" in Gaelic plurals.

The point is, perhaps - and this may be where An Gobaire has gone wrong - that prepositions do not generally govern the genitive in Gaelic (compound ones do, e.g. "mu dheidhinn" and such like, as does "chun" (a variant of "gu"), but generally not - generally the "prepositional"). However, many prepositions - including "de" and "bho" (with variants "a" and "o") - cause weakening (lenition), And, in many nouns, a lenited plural nom/acc/dat form is indentical to an alt-less genitive plural. Hence, perhaps, the confusion.

The problem is exacerbated by English, where "of" is often used where a genitive could have been, e.g. "house of Fraser" and "Fraser's house". However, "Fraser" is accusative/dative/prepositional, not genitive, while "Fraser's" is genitive. And, of course, "de" and "bho" are usually rendered into English as "of" (or "from" in the case of "bho"). For an idea of the difference, I don't think many native English speakers would refer to "milk's litre" rather than "a litre of milk". or "war's man" for "a man of war".

[An Gobaire]

Neither of you seem to have read Cymro's question properly. He or she is talking about the plural noun without the preposition de .

Without "de", it's the plural genitive that follows. Otherwise, with "de" it is plural nominative (but lenited). It just so happens that some lenited plural nominatives look the same as their lenited plural genitive form.

gu leòr de thaighean *lenited plural nominative
gu leòr thaighean *lenited plural genitive

gu leòr de dhaoine
gu leòr dhaoine

but

gu leòr chon

gu leòr de choin

[GunChleoc]

leòr is a noun, so as in any chain of nouns, the last one following it will be in the genitive.

I think the reason for our confusion here is that naturally, one probably wouldn't say gu leòr dhuine at all, but daoine gu leòr or gu leòr de dhaoine.

[Níall Beag]

The point is, perhaps - and this may be where An Gobaire has gone wrong - that prepositions do not generally govern the genitive in Gaelic (compound ones do, e.g. "mu dheidhinn" and such like

I hate the way this rule is typically presented in such abstract terms in most books, then a list is given. Little attention is drawn to the simple idea that the second word is a noun, which naturally leads to the following noun phrase taking the genitive....