Syntactic issues in the Grammar of Old Irish

In this article a few syntactic issues touched byThurneysen’s GrammarofOldIrish and the way they are described are compared with recent overviews of Old Irish grammar, both scholarly grammars and grammars for learners. The issues subject to critical review are the uses of the nominative case (in particular the notion of subject and constructions with nominativus pendens), relative clauses (the way and order in which they are presented, headless relative clauses, use of the article before nouns followed by a relative clauses). The use of the article before nouns followed by a relative clause turns out to be a thorny problem, as contrasting rules havebeenputforwardinGOI andinrecentliterature, anditissuggested herethat neither rule is tenable. Finally, a specific instance of a verbal noun construction is examined in order to discuss the rule in GOI that excludes two non-co-referential genitives, a rule which has never been explicitly questioned but could be subject to revision. The paper is meant as a positive contribution to the development of descriptions of Old Irish syntax.