--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, <brahmabull@...> wrote:

> There must be good studies of "issues" in the historical grammar of

Norse,

> but I have never seen a referene to a real structural grammar of Old
> Norse. Gordon is good for the facts but very conventional.

Gordon is mostly an Old Norse reader with a good dictionary
and a very brief and incomplete summary of the grammar.
He also begins by claiming that all Germanic peoples
originally issued from Sweden. He must have been good chums
with Tolkien & co.

Nevertheless, I cannot deny that I am impressed with the degree
of meticulous care that he has applied in producing his book.

I imagine the modern 'structuralists' write about 10 times
as fast, and enjoy generalisations that are not always
equally useful, when you are stuck with a phrase that you don't
understand.

The way 'structure' comes across to me, in the grammar books I
have looked at, is in the shapes of morphology and syntax.
Most ON grammar books have plenty on morphology, but far fewer
take up a full discussion of syntax. Adolf Noreen, for example
has nothing on syntax, if I am not mistaken. But he, on the
other hand, gives a very complete treatment of phonology.
I suppose phonology is especially important when the texts
you study do not conform to a single standard of spelling.
Reading runic inscriptions would seem to require a very
good knowledge of phonology.

Regards
Xigung