I'm not sure if it's always possible to make such a sharp distinction.
Compare these examples where 'að hausti' seems to refer to an action
of some duration over the course of the autumn:

Þjálfun á standi er best að vinna að hausti
Training (getting into condition?) is best done in the autumn

Þessi 5-6 vikna vinna að hausti hefur víkkað kennslu- og námsunhverfið
This 5-6 weeks' work in the autumn has extended the teaching and
learning environment

And in Old Norse the dative absolute with 'at' + participle can refer
to either a point in time or a continuing state or action.

at sér lifanda "duing his lifetime"
at öllum ásjándum "in the sight of all
at áheyranda höfðingjanum "in the hearing of the chief"
at upprennandi sólu "at sunrise
at liðnum sex vikum "after six weeks are past"

But maybe 'at' was originally more limited to a point in time? I'm
not sure.

> As for translating að hausti specifically as next autumn, to me next
> means nearest and the nearest Autumn to the Summer that is currently
> being described in the story is the Autumn which immediately follows it,
> not the one over twelve months away.

I just tried the sentence out on another speaker of British English,
who agreed with you on this point! So I guess that was just me
niggling too much and seeing potential ambiguities where none exist...

LN

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "AThompson" <athompso@...> wrote:
>
> Hi LN
>
> Thanks for comments. I don´t disagree with anything you say. I guess my
> explanation was just too brief and cryptic.
>
> My understanding that with respect to expressions of time:
>
> Að + dative seems to me to mean at a (particular point in) time
>
> And can be distinguished from, expressions like
>
> Um + accusative which seems to me to mean during a (period of) time
>
> When the period of time is a season, it is very easy to translate both
> into English with `in', eg `in the summer' which could mean either
> during the summer or when it was summer. If we were talking about
> Easter, we would say during Easter, in the first case and at Easter in
> the second case. No confusion.
>
> I guess that's why the photo caption says að hausti. One could hardly
> have a photo representing a period of time, rather it represents a
> moment in time. I wonder if it was a movie or video covering one minute,
> one day, one week, or the whole month whether the caption would have
> been any different.
>
> Similarly, with the teachers who were working að hausti, presumably the
> statistics are the result of a survey that was conducted at various
> specific points of time.
>
> As for translating að hausti specifically as next autumn, to me next
> means nearest and the nearest Autumn to the Summer that is currently
> being described in the story is the Autumn which immediately follows it,
> not the one over twelve months away.
>
> With respect to annat sumar might one also translate this as `the second
> summer', ie the the story has just described their first summer season
> of raiding and now starts to describe their second season?
>
> Kvevðja
> Alan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: norse_course@yahoogroups.com [mailto:norse_course@yahoogroups.com]
> On Behalf Of llama_nom
> Sent: Sunday, 29 October 2006 12:34 AM
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [norse_course] Re: Njal 30 part 2 - - Grace's translation (at
> hausti)
>
>
> > 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
>
>
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