Grammar by Íslendingabók (4) - Honum þótti
Grammar by sagas | Íslendingabók | Verb frames and reformulations
Let's carry on reading Íslendingabók. Chapter 1 tells us about the early colonization of Iceland from Norway. Our latest extensive reading effort has informed us about the time, pioneer and places of this settlement - “when Harald Fair-hair was sixteen winters old”, a Norwegian, a man called Ingolf, “settled south in Reykjavik” and two nearby places, “Ingolf's Headland east of Minthak's Eyri” and “Ingolf's Mountain west of Olfus River”, were named after him. Iceland was then covered in woods. The Norwegians were not, in truth, the very first ones. There were Irish people there, as evidenced by the books and objects they left behind: they departed because they did not like living among pagans.
The present essay fits into the Grammar by sagas series, and will therefore aim to extrapolate some grammatical truths from the intensive reading of a short text. We shall consider the following sentence.
En þá varð fǫr manna mikil mjǫk út hingat ór Norvegi, til þess unz konungrinn Haraldr bannaði, af því at honum þótti landauðn nema.
Norwegian royalty fears demographic hemorrhage.
“Then there was a very great migration of people out here from Norway, until King Harald forbade it, because he thought the land was becoming depopulated.”
The grammatical mysteries to be solved are many, and we shall focus now on the intriguing ending.
We highlight the last clause
En þá varð fǫr manna mikil mjǫk út hingat ór Norvegi, til þess unz konungrinn Haraldr bannaði, af því at honum þótti landauðn nema.
that we translated earlier as
“…, because he thought the land was becoming depopulated.”
Here, we cannot short-circuit the entire grammatical analysis; it will lead us to the point we want to emphasize. We already met af því at earlier, a compound subordinating conjunction, subordinating because it introduces the highlighted clause, subordinate to the principal. If we unpack it, we find a prepositional phrase, af því, where því the singular neuter dative of the demonstrative pronoun. We are not surprised by the dative, called by the preposition at, which itself means from, out of, because of. We then find at, which can also function independently as a subordinating conjunction, often to be translated by that. Putting it all together, it gives literally “from this, that” or “because of this, that”.
Our demonstrative pronoun því acts as a cataphoric reference here: it points forward to the “gist” or “content” of the causal adverbial clause the compound subordinating conjunction introduces, i.e. “he thought the land was…”. We might just as well paraphrase as “because of the fact, that...” What is the grammatical function of that here? We might be inclined to think of it as a relativizer, a relative pronoun referring to the substantive fact. This cannot be the case, however, since the clause it introduces is no relative clause, insofar as it does not modifies a noun phrase: it does not further characterize the substantive fact, so the latter could exist without the that-clause. Compare with a nominal phrase featuring a relative proposition: “the cat that sleeps on the mat”. Here, “that sleeps on the mat” characterizes “the cat”. The full sentence
I can see the cat that sleeps on the mat.
can perfectly survive without the relative clause:
I can see the cat.
It is of course not the case with fact in our slightly rephrased clause from Íslendingabók
“…, because of the fact that he thought the land was becoming depopulated.”
since
“…, because of the fact.”
alone is meaningless. We lack the content of the fact, what the fact actually is. The clause “that he thought the land was becoming depopulated” is too essential to be a relative. It is a so-called content clause, or dependent clause, i.e., providing the content that is implied or commented upon by the main clause.
Let's illustrate with further examples where that is no relativizer, but a complementizer, a subordinating conjunction introducing a content clause. In the following sentences
He believes that global warming is not happening.
She is delighted that John got fired.
They wished that the forest fire had been stamped out earlier.
the that-clause functions clearly as a direct object to the verbal forms, respectively believes, wished and is delighted. We can rephrase slightly: in these reformulations, the that-clause logically represents what exactly the subject is, what it implies, its content.
What he believes is that global warming is not happening. (What he believes = that global warming is not happening)
What she is delighted of is that John got fired. (What she is delighted of = that John got fired)
What they wished is that the forest fire had been stamped out earlier. (What they wished = that the forest fire had been stamped out earlier)
In the syntax of those reformulations, the that-clause functions as a nominative predicative, or subject complement, in exactly the same way as “a lone wolf” in “John is a lone wolf.”.
In contrast, for our “cat that sleeps on the mat”, “that sleeps on the mat” is not the content of the “cat”. It just adds a bit more information about it. The same cat can lead a peaceful existence on the sofa or in the kitchen.
So far, our content clauses complete verbs of cognition (to believe, to wish). They can also complete verbs of reporting (to tell) or perception (to hear). They can also very well complement noun phrases, as in
the idea that the Earth is flat…
which in fact we can be rephrased awkwardly for the sake of making a verb (of cognition) appear
what one thinks, that the Earth is flat… or what one has an idea of, that the Earth is flat…
Just like earlier, “that the Earth is flat” is exactly (the content of) “what one thinks”. Back to our Íslendingabók, in
“…, because of the fact that he thought the land was becoming depopulated.”
the that-clause now appears clearly as a dependent clause making explicit the content of the fact, of því in af því at. But why bother? Well, in “the cat that sleeps on the mat”, “the cat” is the logical subject to “sleeps on the mat”. In
…, af því at honum þótti landauðn nema.
því is no logical subject to “at honum þótti landauðn nema” - and in fact “at honum þótti landauðn nema” has no logical subject in the Old Norse sentence.
Let's digress briefly to the virtues of grammar, a matter we shall explore at greater length later on. Jargon, in this instance, is less important than the logic at work. The former is contingent on the grammatical theory to which we refer, and as in any academic discipline, debates, opposing models and grand ideas abound. Rather, the aim is to grasp the overall articulation of a language, and the system of rules governing it. In this way, the concepts of relativizer, complementizer or content clause are mainly manipulated by modern approaches to grammar, such as generative grammar which builds on assumptions we shall come back to. You may not remember them from early school days. A more traditional approach would have said relative pronoun or subordinating conjunction. Nevertheless, the relative pronoun is also, in its own way, a subordinating conjunction, so the relativizer-complementizer distinction seems a sensible way of capturing a nuance in usage.
Accurately mapping the grammatical structure of a sentence is the catalyst for accurate translation and comprehension. Ideally, grammatical analysis should become second nature. This is particularly true for a language with such a rich inflectional system as Old Norse. As we discussed much earlier, considerable variation in word order is allowed, since the grammatical function of words is already marked by case endings: rigidly assigning a place in the sentence to each function becomes redundant with form. Anglophone reflexes for parsing sentences, for spotting subject, verb, complement do not hold up.
As far as we are concerned, knowing that our subordinating conjunction does not act as a relativizer, and in particular does not refer to a logical subject to what follows, is important for grasping the first notion of grammar that interests us today.
Haugen talks about verb frames. (Haugen, 2015, p.132)
Verbrammene fortel kor mange nominale ledd verbet knyter til seg, dvs. subjekt og objekt (som det kan være flere av).
“Verb frames tell you how many nominal clauses the verb attaches to itself, i.e. subject and object (of which there may be several).”
We are interested in þótti in
…, af því at hónum þótti landauðn nema.
It is the third-person singular past indicative of þykkja (to think). By all means regular, a weak verb of the telja-class. As we have discussed at length, and paradoxically, our Old Norse verb thought has no logical subject. Its verb frame is Verb+Dative according to Haugen’s typology. Our dative here is hónum, the dative singular masculine form of the third person personal pronoun hann (he). The dative is typically the case of the indirect object. Such that “hónum þótti” equates closely to the broken English “*it thought to him”, or closer to correctness “it seemed to him”. “The thought came to him, that…”.
Verbalet tek eit objekt i dativ, men ikkje noko subjekt.
“The verb takes an object in the dative, but not a subject.”
A number of verbs fall into this category, Haugen tells us: hitna (to become hot), lika (to like), litask (to look about), svala (to cool), sýnask (to appear), versna (to worsen), and our verb of main interest, þykkja (to think).
In Norwegian Bokmål, the impersonal construct with dative experiencer is replaced is those instances by a personal construct with (nominative) explicit subject. In particular, our impersonal turn “hónum þótti” is well rendered by “han syntes”, that English can translate into “he feels”, “he thinks”, or (making our dative reappear) “it seems to him”. Nevertheless, there is something special about the verb å synes. A deponent verb, it is a passive form with an active meaning, an exemplar of the famous Norwegian -s passive. We therefore still have a memory of the ancient passive.
In fact, å synes derives naturally from Old Norse sýnask, which we have just listed among the subjectless verbs with dative. Why translate þykkja into Norwegian Bokmål by means of a descendant of sýnask? Well, Norwegian Bokmål does not record, it seems, any descendants of þykkja. Instead, its presumed Proto-Germanic ancestor, *þunkijaną, produced a West-Proto-Germanic cousin from whom the Shakespearean methinks descends.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” (Hamlet)
“Another moon; but O! methinks how slow
This old moon wanes” (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
“Methinks I have
a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet
hay, hath no fellow.” (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
Today an archaism, methinks interests us as an English vestige of this impersonal form plus dative. Methinks is better rendered by “it seems to me”, “it occurs to me”, than the simple “I think”, a slight nuance of a passive. Me- is the trace of the old dative, while the third person singular form with its -s ending is clearly impersonal. while the third person singular marked by the -s ending in absence of subject denotes the impersonal form. Modern German also has its archaic descendant, dünken, which the Duden dictionary explains as “jemandem so vorkommen, scheinen”, quite literally “to seem/appear to someone”. Vorkommen in particular renders the passive character: thoughts or impressions come (kommen) to someone. Here, the experiencer is in the dative or, more frequently, in the accusative, the case of the direct object. “Mich dünkt”, where the accusative can be rendered by (the incorrect) “*it seems me”, while a dative-like construct is more natural to English, “it seems to me”.
Now let's look at the end of our clause, which falls under what Haugen calls omformingar (reformulation), more precisely in the småsetningar (short sentences) and, further, the nominativ med infinitiv (nominatif with infinitive) categories. (Haugen, 2015, p.153)
…, af því at hónum þótti landauðn nema.
landauðn is our nominative, i.e., subject case. It is a feminine substantive composed of the substantives land (land) and auðn (wilderness, desert). The whole is given by The Cleasby & Vigfusson Dictionary the English equivalent “laying a land (country) waste”, in other words, depopulation. nema is our infinitive, of a strong verb, meaning to take as the Old English niman (still alive in numb or nim) was superseded by the Scandinavian taka. (In modern Scandinavian we have the Norwegian Nynorsk taka, the Swedish taga, or the Danish tage). The meaning of nema is rarely limited to the literal, and to take sets solely the big orientation. To take away, to bereave of something. To take by force, to seize upon. Accompanied by við, to strike against so as to stop, to come no further. To reach, to touch. To stop. With staðar, to take place. Cognitively, to take in a mental sense or by the senses, to perceive, just like the Latin apprehendere, thereby also, to learn. But luckily the same Cleasby & Vigfusson Dictionary, always rich in literary examples taken from the sagas, mentions our passage from Íslendingabók. Entry nema 2.A.6:
6. to amount to, be equivalent to; ef eigi nemr kúgildi, Grág. ii. 233; honum þótti landauðn nema, Íb. 4; það nemr öngu, litlu, miklu, it is of no, of small, of great importance; bríkr þær er greyping hefir numit, Gþl. 345.
Our infinitive group takes on its meaning: to amount to depopulation, to take the level of depopulation. Or a maybe more natural expression, to become depopulated.
Within the short sentences category, the nominativ med infinitiv configuration is far less common than its twin, the akkusativ med infinitiv. In both cases, it is the reformulation of a subordinate proposition (with a finite, i.e. conjugated, verb) into an infinitive proposition when brought up into the main proposition. The grammatical subject of the subordinate clause before reformulation is switched to the accusative in one case, kept in the nominative in the other. The nominative-preserving construction occurs, Haugen tells us, solely with the verbs sýnask and þykkja, which we now know well. It is precisely their natural construction without grammatical subject, and with experiencer in the dative (“hónum þótti”), that governs the nominative (“landauðn nema”) of their subordinate's reformulation. Haugen indeed says:
Ettersom det ikkje er noko subject i nominativ i samband med slike verb, vil eit subject i ei underliggjande setning bli ståande uendra i nominativ dersom den underliggjande setninga blir løfta opp i den overordna setninga.
“Since there is no subject in the nominative case accompanying such verbs [sýnask and þykkja], the subject of a dependent clause will remain unchanged in the nominative case if the latter is lifted up into the main clause.”
The “place of the nominative” is free in the sentence's inflectional organization, so the transformation needs not resort to the accusative.
Let's take a closer look at the transformation in question. The arrival point is the clause
…, af því at hónum þótti landauðn nema.
which very literally (improperly) translates into
*…, because he thought the land to become depopulated.
This is improper in English, since the verb to think, in its first meaning, “to have a particular idea or opinion about something/somebody; to believe something” (Oxford Learner’s dictionary), requires a verbal direct object to be a that-clause with finite verb. (We can have He thinks to change the tire. expressing intention, or the passive construct They are thought to have exceeded the speed limit.)
We can correct our literal translation into
…, because he thought the land was becoming depopulated.
making the that-clause obvious. It is the Old Norse equivalent of this that-clause that is the starting point of the transformation-according-to-Haugen. Nema is conjugated in the third person singular (in agreement with landauðn) past indicative, nam. We have already the nominative landauðn, which the transformation is to leave unchanged.
Here is our transformation at work.
(at) landauðn nam (that the land was becoming depopulated) →landauðn nema
We shall come back more systematically to the two types of reformulation, accusativ med infinitiv and nominativ med infinitiv in our Old Norse Grammar series. Yet, let us note here that these have numerous equivalents in the broad Germanic spectrum, and elsewhere. The English to think admits no direct infinitive complement, but consider to wish or to expect.
He wished that the land would become depopulated.→He wished the land to become depopulated.
She expected that the bus would depart earlier.→She expected the bus to depart earlier.
Or more Shakespearean.
Ros. She desires to speak with you in her
closet ere you go to bed. (The Tragedy of Hamlet)
German has infinitive sentences (Infinitivsätze), which can take on subject or complement functions, whose infinitive is accompanied by zu and lacks a subject.
Er behauptet, die Behörden auf die Untat aufmerksam gemacht zu haben. (He claims to have alerted the authorities to the outrage.)
The logical subject of the infinitive is the (non repeated) one of the principal, er, i.e. he. The case of “die Behörden” (the authorities) is the accusative, direct object to our past infinitive “gemacht (zu) haben”. It reformulates the following (uncommon) sentence where dass is the subordinating conjunction (that)
Er behauptet, dass er die Behörden auf die Untat aufmerksam gemacht hat. (literally, He claims that he has alerted the authorities to the outrage.)
And the Norwegian structure is not far off at all.
Han hevder å ha gjort myndighetene oppmerksom på overtredelsen. (He claims to have alerted the authorities to the outrage.)
In German or Norwegian, a verb of perception, such as to see or to hear, is followed by a bare infinitive (without å or zu respectively).
Jeg kan høre toget komme i det fjerne. (I can hear the train coming in the distance.)
Ich höre den Zug in der Ferne kommen. (I can hear the train coming in the distance.)
We spoke a little Nynorsk (literally, New Norwegian) through Haugen's grammar, which was written in that language. We shall soon explore the origins of Norway's two official languages, Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk, compare their distinctive characteristics, and examine their place in the North Germanic spectrum.
References
Haugen, O. E. (2015). Norrøn grammatikk i hovuddrag. Novus.
Cleasby, Richard & Gudbrand Vigfusson. "nema." An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874. https://cleasby-vigfusson-dictionary.vercel.app/word/nema