Irish

Abstract

The three most productive word-formation mechanisms in Irish (called Gaeilge in standard Irish) are a) prefixation, b) composition (with a small set of deadjectival and denominal premodifiers) and c) suffixation. Prefixation and composition are common only with nouns and adjectives as bases. The highly productive diminutive suffix -ín does not change the class of (mostly noun) bases. The category of the abstract comparative contains an intersection of the suffixes of both the inflectional comparative adjective and the derivational abstract noun. Many lexicalised phrases are important lexical items but are not considered as word-formation unless they show morphological signs of univerbation. Conversion is restricted, and blending and clipping are rare.