Hi Imre,

This is a very ingenious idea, and one that hadn't occured to me. 
I'm not so sure it works though, but I'm not really in a position to
judge, given what Haukur has said about editorial leeway in the
matter of abbreviations.  I tried searching in an online text of
Hr�lfs saga kraka, for konungr, konung, konungrinn and konunginn,
and found examples of the indefinite accusative 'konung' used of an
already introduced person, e.g. Chapter 18 Svipdagr r��r fyrir
konung "S. rode in front of THE king"; 19 ok kva� konung mega �at
sj� "and said that THE king could see"; 22 Svipdagr gekk �egar fyrir
konung "S. immediately went before the king".  Two of these are
governed by a preposition, but one is the direct object of a verb,
albeit in an accusative + infinitive construction.  There are also
plenty of instances of the definite nominative konungrinn.

(I'm not counting instances where 'konung' appears with a proper
name, or with other demonstrative.)

Come to think of it, that one's only attested in post-medieval
manuscripts.  Looking now at Hervarar saga, the R version, which I
think dates from the 15th c., I find no examples of 'konunginn', and
only two of 'konung':

Hj�rvar�r bi�r konung segja skj�tt "H. asked THE king to answer
quickly"

N� grunar konung, hverr ma�rinn mun vera. "Now the king suspects who
this man must be." (But the verb 'gruna' takes accusative for the
logical subject, so here 'konung' might be considered the subject,
in spite of its accusative form.)

V�lsunga saga is preserved in a manuscript from around 1400, and the
text is dated to the 13th century.  It contains lots of examples of
the nominative 'konungrinn', but as far as I can see only one
accusative 'konung' where English would have a definite article, e.g.

Randverr heimti konung � tal "Randver sought an audience with the
king"

But for all I know these are the exceptions.  Maybe it would be
better to start with a proper critical edition and try to establish
just what the rules are are some particular time in history,
although even then the composite nature of so many of these texts
and their scribal history could complicate things.  Or is there a
really obvious rule that we're overlooking?

Llama Nom


PS. Can anyone recommend any good general books on Old Norse
syntax?  Preferrably not to specialised or theoretical, but with
lots of practical detail.




--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, IK <hobbi-germanista@...>
wrote:

>  >Throughout this story `konungr' appears countless times without
a
>  >definite article where, in English, one would normally be used;
then
>  >out of the blue, the article is used in: `Ok n� er hann s�
konunginn.'
>  >Can anyone give a reason why it would be used on this particular
>  >occasion?
>
> As I have seen so far ON seems to be quite consequent in using
> indefinite form when referring to a person � who is already
introduced
> to the reader - by his title. As in that part of the text that you
have
> translated the 'konungur' is in definite form only when it becomes
the
> object (i.e. transformed to accusative) of the sentence:
>
> 'Ok n� er hann s� konunginn.'
>
> Otherwise the word 'konungr' appears in nominative or dative.
> May be using indefinite form when referring to an already
introduced
> person as the acting person seems to be ok in ON, but as soon as
it
> becomes the objective of the action of an other person it must be
> clarified - by adding definite article - that it is the
aforementioned
> person and not someone new, i.e. 'He saw the king [that we've been
> talking about]' and not a new king was seen. May be ON sees this
time
> better to use definite form, feeling that indefinite form could be
> confusing.
>
> 
> Anyway I am may not be right,  one might give a different
explanation
> too.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Imre Kovacs
> Hungary





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