til bana  -  L N that's an odd coincidence, I'm sure I've seen an expression - Mallory's Morte D'Arthur it is "to his bane" the meaning is clear in context that his bane was his death, it seems (ahem -it me seemeth)
there are very many more links between Old Norse and Old or even Modern English, just waiting to be discovered (by our group of course)
Kveðja
Patricia 
----- Original Message -----
From: llama_nom
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 11:29 PM
Subject: [norse_course] verða + pp.



In a sentence like

ok varð gengit lengra en hann ætlaði
"and he went further than he intended"
(Yngvars saga víðförla)

does the combination ´verða' + pp. mean exactly the same as a simple
indicative?  This is how Pálsson and Edwards translate it in Vikings
in Russia.  In English to say "he HAPPENED to go further than he
intended" would add a sense that it was pure chance and not intended
by anyone or caused by anything in particular: it didn´t necessarily
*have* to happen that way, it just did.  Does `verða' ever convey a
similar sense, or is the auxilliary verb completely superfluous to
the meaning in such cases.

The nearest I can find in Zoega´s entry for VERÐA is:

þeim varð litit til hafs
"they happened to look seaward"

(Other examples of 'verða' + pp. are passive, or have meanings
like "to become", or with dative "to befall someone".)

And how about phrases like: hann lét verða farit "he went"; hann lét
hana verða tekna "he seized her".  Zoega in these examples just uses
the English indicative, and there doesn´t seem to be any suggestion
of chance involved.

Here's another idiom where `verða' doesn't seem to add any extra
meaning: Henni varð þat fyrir at hún bítr einn þeirra til bana
(Völsunga saga), at least not in Byock's translation: "She bit one
of the brothers to death".  The old Magnússon and Morris translation
has: "and the first thing she did was to bite one of those brethren
till he died."  Surely no accident.  On that sombre note...

Llama Nom





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