Sæl Laurel!
Wow! You´ve really got me scurrying to my
grammar books for this!!!
OK. This is what I´ve unravelled.
If anyone disagrees with me, please chip in!
You mentioned that in English "a few" and "few"
convey a difference in meaning. I agree and I think this is because they
are also different grammatically.
"a few" is a pronoun - it can replace a noun.
E.g. How many people were there? Oh, just a few.
"few" is an adjective (there are five criteria
of what constitutes an adjective, but a word doesn´t have to fulfill all 5 to
qualify - "few" definitely meets four of the five).
In ON, Gordon has "fár" in the glossary as a noun,
or it can occur as an adverb. However, in his grammar section he also
includes it under Comparison of Adjectives (p.292).
From the context of this passage, I believe that
"fátt" is an adjective. Barnes analyses it as:
an adjective: strong,
neuter, singular and nominative. It is
the subject of the clause, the
neuter form is used
because the adjective does not
modify a noun with a
particular number or
gender. In the absence of such a
noun, the adjective becomes the
head of the noun
phrase.
You ask about "manna". Well, according to
Stefán Einarsson´s grammar of modern Icelandic, there is a construction called
the "partitive genitive". This is where you have a whole, of which a part
is taken. He gives the examples of
tvö hundruð
manna - 200 men
enginn
þeirra
- none of them
I think "fátt manna" comes under this
category.
Please, Icelanders, have I got the right end of the
stick or am I leading Laurel astray? Please let us know if we're going
wrong here!
So to conclude, a purist would say we
should use an adjective in English to translate the ON adjective which gives
us:
then he went into the hall and
few men were there
How does that sound to you?
Thanks for keeping me on my toes!
Kveðja,
Sarah.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 4:05
PM
Subject: Re: [norse_course] Boðvarr
translation 1-8 -- one more question
3b. gekk síðan inn í hơllina, ok var þar fátt
manna.
fátt=noun of fár=a
few
Yes
manna=plur. gen. of maðr= of men
Yes
he goes - afterwards - into - the hall - and - were -
there - a few - of
men
then he went into the hall, and there were a few men
there. Yes
fátt could be translated as either "few" or "a few"
which are (to me anyway) semantically different in English i.e. there were not
many people, or there were some people. Because fátt is a noun, does
that point to one or the other? Is there an adjectival form? I
guess I'm taking a noun to mean "a few" rather than "few" but maybe it doesn't
have that distinction? Would men always be genitive, or could there be
other constructions?
Laurel
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