Hi, again, everyone…ok, so I’ve spent literally the better part of the day trying to figure this out, and I’m at my wit’s end…so once again, I must ask a question of anyone who knows:

I came across a phrase in my grammar book today:

“in éadan muintir na hÉireann a bheith sa chogadh”
(against the people of Ireland being in the war)

As in, I’m assuming, “Tá sé in éadan muintir na hÉireann a bheith sa chogadh.”

And I logically get the basics of why/how this sentence says what it says, but I wanted to really grasp the construction. So I researched (and after a few hours of being utterly lost about the word “a” in the sentence) I finally found that this “a” is the preposition “a,” …not the particle “a.”

But in all my sources (A Grammar of Modern Irish, nualeargais, and the Caighdeán Oifigiúil), I just couldn’t understand how this construction works. I may be misunderstanding, but it all seemed to imply that there must be an noun object to the verbal noun ( “bheith”) in order for the subject (muintir na hÉireann) to be allowed to come before the verbal noun, but there isn’t one…since ”sa chogadh” isn’t an object, but rather an adverbial prepositional phrase modifying the intransitive verbal noun bheith.

Thank you any/everyone so much in advance! My brain is utterly ker-fuddled

Mise le Meas,

ROSIE

It is a particle, but it derives originally from the preposition do.

1. The noun can be an object: rud a dhéanamh (to do something - where "something" is the object)
2. Or a subject: é a bheith ann (for him to be there).

Admittedly, these are conceptually different.

There is no difference between "particle" or "preposition" in case of "a".



Bheith is intransitive. It cannot have objects.
Subjects come (almost) always before their verbal nouns in infinitive clauses.

Thank you both so much! Do either of you know maybe an exact page link on Nualeargais.ie where I can further read about this kind of construction? I looked under Syntax and Clauses, and couldn’t find anything that quite fit. Thank you so much again!

in German:
http://www.braesicke.de/verbnom1.htm#inf

esp. regarding subjects:
http://www.braesicke.de/verbnom1.htm#InfinSubjekt

Thank you! Thank you!….this was exactly what I was looking for!