How often have I amused - mildly - People I know well - by passing a plate and asking "A little more on Patricia's Plate please"
 
Is that impersonal (besides a trifle greedy)  if asked for a reason for what I have said "It's a Patricia Thing"  or would we have thought Hoskuld said something along those lines in Jest - for example -
"Hoskuld approves of it"
 
It does seem reasonable (to Patricia)
 
Kveðja
Patricia
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: llama_nom
Date: 31/03/2008 17:10:54
Subject: [norse_course] Re: Höskuldi kveðst það vel að skapi
 
--- 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
 
 
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