Heill Oskar!
And thank you for your friendly comments.
The reason why I was interested in the ablative case
was because several Old Norse grammar books use that particular
word to describe the mechanics of the ON dative case.

Thus the work lies in trying to understand what the books are saying
about Old Norse.

Neither for me is it impossible to imagine that it would be possible
to learn about ON syntax without using a term like "ablative".
Nevertheless the present international grammatical terminology
does seem to be based on an inherently Latin terminology, as far
as I am able to tell. That is the one of the reasons why I wished
to explore it to some extent.

I also find the idea fascinating that old Indo-European had
an extended morphology that involved more than 4 cases,
and that some of these have flowed together into the Old Norse
dative case. To me that is an explanatory model that provides
an excellent explanation as to why the ON dative seems to be
so difficult to pinpoint under one single leading idea.
As you know, most people think of the "dative" as a case of
"giving". But when you look at the ON dative it appears to
include several things beside the idea of giving.

>Heill Keth,
>
>Thank you for your ponderings on grammar :) I should like to use the
>opportunity to make some (hopefully) educative comments.
>
>It's amuzing that grammarians should be inclined to use terms
>like "ablative" in regard to ON. It's about equally impractical and
>confusing as using the terms "nominative" and "accusative" in regard
>to Modern English! Semantically speaking, all languages
>have "ablative", at least to the extent that ON or English do; in
>that sense, "out of the car" is an example of English ablative. The
>point is, neither English nor ON have a *separate form* for the
>ablative; and that's what counts.
>
>Languages seldom or perhaps never have exactly the same system of
>distinctions; English differentiates adjectives and adverbs, but
>German doesn't. If English would do as German, we'd say "I quick
>left", instead of "I quickly left". So as far as German is concerned,
>of what use is a term like 'adverb'?

The books I have seen about German do however point to the adverb as
a word category in German. Some examples are: eben, soeben, immer,
noch, oft, nur, kaum, nicht. These words are not adjectives.

>So we might identify all the possible roles, usages, categories that
>people could possibly think of differentiating in their languages;
>the resulting system would amount to "universal grammar" (not as
>dramatic as it sounds). But analyzing every language according to
>that system would be very impractical...
>
>Let's take a sample analysis of an English sentence:
>
>"two guys stepped out of the car"
>
>We might analyze "guys" as a noun in dual nominative, "stepped" as a
>verb in 3rd person dual active indicative, and "car" as singular
>ablative. And that's using only the grammatical terms that are
>precedent in Western grammars. Other alien distinctions are bound to
>exist somewhere in the language jungle out there.
>
>Obviously, that would be very impractical.
>
>I have a simple analogy to explain my point. The grammatical system
>of a language is similar to a system of measurement, such
>as "imperial" or "metric". When you put a ruler with inch
>measurements on it next to an equally long ruler with centimetres on
>it, you'll see how the "notches" don't fit each other. Still, the
>rulers are equally long, undisputably; the distance is the same, no
>matter how you measure it. The distance is analogous to what I
>called "universal grammar" above; the conflicting notches and
>measurements are analogous to our various grammatic terms.

That sounds like relativity theory! ;)

>Remember, languages weren't invented by grammarians, just as the

Some languages were, though! (Esperanto, Pascal, FORTRAN etc)

>Earth wasn't invented by geologists.

Again, some landscapes WERE made/constructed by sentinent beings.
(e.g. the Dutch polder landscapes)
But I see your point that "natural" languages are supposed
to have arisen spontanously in a rousseauesque pre-intelectual
human environment. Apropos of which, today the newspaper quoted
Wittgenstein as having said "Even if tigers had a language, we
wouldn't be able to understand it" (something one may or may not
agree with)

>Grammarians and linguists are
>just trying to study a phenomenon that they still only understand
>marginally, while thinking of various systems and terms to try to
>contain the phenomenon and make it easier to handle. They aren't
>always right, and even when they are, they aren't always practical.

What are in your opinion the best reference books on
Old Norse grammar and syntax?

>In language learning, when you have a "feel" for a language, you no
>longer need artificial systems to contain it.

Exactly. But to develop such a feel for the language, it
is best to live among native speakers of that language.
And even then grammar will come in handy for the fine points.
After all, the uneducated usually have a hard time speaking
"right". (in most countries)

>My point is, don't feel too bound by terms; just try to understand
>the usage, then go on to contain the language in any way you find
>practical. If "nominative" seems like a silly word to use, just use
>some other word that feels better. As long as you get the language
>right :)

Well, I think nominative is a good word.
1. Because it is an international term.
2. Because it derives from "nomen" which means "name".
Even in Icelandic they say "nefnifall", which is the same thing.
(nefna = to mention or to name something)

But of course you are right that many concepts can be discarded with.
Especially such as are absent from a given morphology and syntax.

The point, as I see it, is that we shall need some labels
in order to be able to communicate and think about languages,
as well as when we try to look up things we want to find out about.

Positivist science, does however recommend that such labels
and their interrelationships should arise through a study of
the language itself. The names one uses to fill in the labels
with are of course arbitrary, as long as they are distinct.
But it is an enormous help to memory if the names also reflect
the interrelationship that the different labels have to each other.

The big error, that has been perpetrated by grammarians of the past
is that they have tried to describe languages by means of labels
that have arisen throught the study of other languages (such as
Latin) that have a different morphology/syntax. (case of English
being pressed into Latin categories)

But I do not think such is the case for the present discussion
as to whether the Old Norse dative contains an "ablative" component,
since most authors seem to agree that it does. One can of course use
a different name, e.g. "X" or maybe "dative of removal" as a plain
language descriptive name. (the Latin names are all descriptive
in that sense btw)

Best regards
Keth


P>S> A tip for DeepStream:
Magnús Péturson:"Isländisch", Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1978,
isbn 3-87118-319-9, 220 pages. It gives a nice introduction about
the history and topography of Iceland, then continues to give
a brief and friendly description of the Icelandic languages.
The book also includes a large coloured foldout map of Iceland.
All in German.

The book does not have much about syntax, but it does have some.
(around 10 pages) For example on page 133 there are the following
remarks about "Dativ":
Der Dativ bezeichnet normalerweise das indirekte Objekt wie
im Deutschen: ég gef HONUM bókina »ich gebe ihm das Buch«.
Der isländische Dativ hat aber auch eine Fülle andere Bedeutungen,
die vom instrumentalen Gebrauch bis zu verschiedenen adverbialen
Verwendungen reichen...

So you see that Péturson too mentions the instrumental dativ
as important (for modern Icelandic). Btw Oskar, are there any
big differences between Old Norse and modern Icelandic in
these regards? Dativ is also called "þágufall", which must
be from þiggja = to receive [a gift] --> þága f. = a profit?
So Icelandic dative would then be "the case of profit?" (gain)