A couple of Wikipedia entries for anyone who want to get into the
theory side of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_verb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_%28linguistics%29

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@...> wrote:
>
> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "AThompson" <athompso@> wrote:
>
> > Höskuldi (impersonal) kveðst það vel að skapi
> > That was-declared OK by (or to?) Hoskuld to (his) mind
>
> I'd suggest translating it simply as "Hoskuld says that suits him
> (just fine)" or "Hoskuld says that's okay by him", or something along
> those lines. The syntax may seem a bit bizarre from an English point
> of view, but it's perfectly normal in Old Norse for the subject of
> 'kveðask', in the main (matrix) clause, to be put into the dative if
> that's the case required by the subordinate (embedded) clause. Since
> this is purely a syntactic quirk of Icelandic, there's no need to try
> to represent it exactly in the syntax of an idiomatic English
> translation, if that's even possible.
>
> So, on it's own, the idea of the subordinate clause could be
> expressed: 'þat er Höskuldi vel at skapi' "that suits Hoskuld",
> "Holskuld likes the sound of that", "Hoskuld is happy with that".
>
> The subject of 'kveðask' would be nominative if the subordinated verb
> is one that - in finite forms - would have a nominative subject, e.g.
> 'hann kvezk vera ófúss' "he said he was reluctant" ('hann er ófúss'
> "he is reluctant"). But if the subject of 'kveðask' correlates with a
> dative experiencer in the infinite clause, then the subject of
> 'kveðask' is put into the dative too. Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson has some
> examples in his paper 'Old Icelandic: A Non-Configurational Language?'
> NOWELE 26:3-29 (1995) [ http://www.hi.is/%7Eeirikur/ ].
>
> Árna kvazk þat illt þykkja.
> "Arni said he found this bad."
>
> Hrafni Oddssyni kvazk þat vel líka.
> "Hrafn Oddsson said that he liked this."
>
> Henni kvazk harðla gott þykkja hann at finna.
> "She said she enjoyed very much to meet him."
>
> It might help to compare these with some examples of unsuffixed 'kveða'.
>
> Hann kvað mik vera gott mannsefni
> "He said I had the makings of a fine man"
>
> Aron kvað sik dreymt hafa, at [...]
> "Aron said he'd dreamt that."
>
> Þórðr [...] kvað Þorgeiri mjök missýnask.
> "Thord said that Thorgeir was much mistaken."
>
> In the first example, the (normally) nominative subject of 'vera'
> becomes accusative. In the second, the accusative-experiencer subject
> of 'dreyma' stays accusative. (No problem there: all parts of the
> sentence want it to be accusative!) But in the third example, the
> dative-experiencer subject of 'missýnask' stays dative - so dative
> outranks accusative. Our example is 'kveðask' is like this last
> example, except that the subject of the finite verb in the main clause
> is the same person as the dative experiencer of the subordinate clause.
>
> Hmm, does that make any sort of sense at all?
>
> LN
>