From: llama_nom
Message: 7459
Date: 2006-10-28
--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@...> wrote:
>
>
> > Ekki héldu þeir aftur að hausti.
>
> Grace: "They didn't steer back until? autumn."
>
> Alan: "at= see Zoega III (1) Prep of time at sumri hausti, vetri,
> vári, next summer, etc..."
>
> I wonder if it might be better to read this as simply "they didn't
> head back in the autumn", Zoega III (1), cf. at páskum "at Easter", at
> kveldi "in the evening". E.g. a Modern Icendic example from Google
> shows a graph of the percentage of teachers 'sem var við störf að
> hausti en var ekki við störf haustið á eftir', which the page
> translates "who were working in the autumn but were not working the
> following autumn." Another example is of a page of photographs of
> 'Tjörnin að hausti' "The Tjörn in the autumn", "...at autumn", hardly
> photographs taken "next autumn"!
>
> If I've understood this right, Zoega's definition "next summer, &c."
> is just intended to be a special subset of this where 'komanda' or 'er
> kemr' is understood, "in the (coming) autumn", but I don't think he's
> saying that 'at' + a season name always has to have this sense of
> "next..." MM & HP "that autumn" seems logical; if they've spent the
> summer sailing and fighting, autumn would be the season immediately
> approaching, and this accords with the fact that the next time period
> mentioned is 'annat sumar' "the following summer". To me, to say
> "next autumn" here might suggest that the narrative has just skipped a
> year without telling us what they did "that autumn".
>
> LN
>