ABSTRACT
In Irish, because of its verb-initial word order, the verb is often separated from the other elements of the verb phrase, but the verb and its complements nonetheless form a semantic unit distinct from the subject, and many contemporary analyses treat verb phrases as syntactic units as well. In certain structures, the verb phrase components do remain together as a surface syntactic unit. Regular Irish verbs fall into two classes, differing slightly in their conjugations, that is, the form of the suffixes marking tense. The following tenses can be distinguished in the forms of Irish verbs: present, past, past habitual, and future. These are formed with suffixes, and in some tenses the beginning of the verb form also changes. The past tense of regular verbs is formed by lenition of the verb stem; there is no other tense suffix.
