This is the so-called "substantive verb", which takes an adverb, an adverbial phrase, or a prepositional phrase as the predicate. When the predicate is a noun, a pronoun, or an adjective, the copulais is used instead.
As in modern Irish, if there is no other predicate in an existential“there is” clause, the adverband is used:
c.800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published inThesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb.29a28
Ní taibre grád for nechcausa a pectha ꝉ a chaíngníma: arbíit alailiand ro·finnatar a pecthe resíu do·coí grád forru; alaili is íarum ro·finnatar. Berir dano fri láa brátha.
Yousg should not confer orders on anyone because of his sin or of his good deed: forthere are some whose sins are found out before their ordination, others whose [sins] are found out afterwards. Reference is made, then, to the day of judgment.
*Certain conjunct forms of the present progressive are formed withfil, taking aninfixed object pronoun as the logical subject, e.g.ní·ḟil "it is not",ní-n·fil "we are not",ní-s·fil "they are not" etc.
The person of the affixed pronoun corresponds to the subject of ‘have’ in English; the number of the verb form corresponds to the number of the direct object of ‘have’ in English. All forms in the table below have a singular subject unless otherwise indicated.
