Sorry Sarah, got it now!
Thanks for everything,
Simon
In a message dated 14/04/03 12:27:32 GMT Daylight Time, bowensli@... writes:
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: