Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Side 140

138
Christer Platzack
3b Gísla saga
With ok 69/102 68% Equal subject 13/18 72%
VS 94/390 24% Non-equal subject 54/84 67%
Without ok 25/288 9% Equal subject 8/58 14%
Non-euqal subject 17/230 7%
3c Islendinga saga
With ok 43/60 72% Equal subject9/12 75%
VS 120/390 31% Non-equal subject 34/38 71%
Without ok 77/330 23% Equal subject 22/57 39%
Non-equal subject 55/273 20%
ln all three Sagas under consideration, the presence of ok is a
stronger factor for the VS-order than referential equivalence between
the subject of the VS-sentence and the subject of the preceding sen-
tence. It is only for VS-sentences in Grettis saga not introduced by ok
that I have not been able to demonstrate any effect of the Equal subject
parameter.
Naturally, it might be possible to discern more factors playing a role
for the occurrence of narrative inversion. However, given the sample
size used in this investigation, it would not be possible to include these
factors in Table 3; the figures for each level would be too small. Never-
theless, we shall consider the effect upon narrative inversion of a factor
probably unrelated to the o^-parameter and the Equal-subject para-
meter: the role played by the choice of finite verb.
Are certain verbs more inclined than others to occur in VS-con-
structions? This question is put forward by Hallberg (1965), but to the
best of my knowledge, no one has as yet tried to answer it. Naturally,
the question cannot be answered simply by counting the verbs found
in VS-constructions: we must also take into consideration the fre-
quency of each verb in the text. As a way to answer the question, I
have registrated the finite verb for each of the declarative macrosyn-
tagms in my three samples, and determined for each verb its distribu-
tion on the two sentence types VS and non- VS (i.e., S'E, TVS, and
Other). Since the investigated texts have between 22% and 31% of de-
clarative macrosyntagms with narrative inversion, we would expect
each verb to occur with that frequency in the FS-construction, if it is
randomly distributed. To reduce the influence of chance upon my re-
sult, I will widen the interval 22%—31 % by 10% on each side, i.e., I
consider a verb as randomly distributed between the KS-type and the