The Loss of the Impersonal in Bilingual Speakers of Irish
Aidan Doyle
University College, Cork
Abstract
This article is a brief examination of a phenomenon attested in contemporary Irish, namely, the loss of the impersonal. This formal change in the grammar of the language is taking place in a context of wholesale restructuring of Irish due to the influence of English. The old impersonal of LMI is rapidly giving way to a new passive, one that reflects very faithfully the structure of English. This tendency is not an entirely new one, going back as it does to at least the 19th century. We have suggested that the motive for the change is two-fold: a desire to allow for the expression of agents with passives, and a need to imitate the information structure of English for an audience consisting almost entirely of L2 speakers of English. The first might be considered a motive which might arise language-internally, while the second can only be regarded as due to external pressure.