Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Qupperneq 141

Narrative Inversion in Old Icelandic
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non- FS-type if it occurs in the FS-construction with a frequency of
12% to 41%. A verb with less than 12% of its occurrences in the FS-
construction is called a NON-VS-Verb, whereas a verb with more than
41% of its occurrences in the f'S'-construction is called a VS-Verb.
The randomly distributed verbs are labelled NEUTRAL Verbs. Only
verbs which occur at least 8 times in a text are considered.
The result of this investigation is presented in Table 4.
Table 4: VS- Verbs, NON- FS- Verbs and NEUTRAL Verbs in Grettis
saga, Gísla saga and Islendinga saga. (The abbreviations are explained
in the text.)
Grettis saga Gisla saga Islendinga saga
búa NEUTRAL 2/8 25%
byggja NON-VS 0/8 0%
biðja NON-VS 0/9 0%
eiga NEUTRAL 2/10 20% NEUTRAL 3/8 38%
fara VS 6/14 43% NON-VS 3/33 9% NEUTRAL 7/27 26%
ganga NEUTRAL 2/8 25%
gera NEUTRAL 2/8 25%
hafa NEUTRAL 3/15 20% VS 6/12 50% NEUTRAL 3/14 21%
koma NEUTRAL 5/19 26%
kveða NON-VS 1/24 4% NON-VS 0/8 0% NON-VS 0/9 0%
munu VS 5/10 50% NEUTRAL 5/21 24%
mæla NON-VS 0/15 0% NON-VS 1/10 10%
ríða VS 6/14 42%
segja NON-VS 0/38 0% NON-VS 1/23 5% NON-VS 1/14 7%
skulu VS 5/8 63%
spyrja NEUTRAL 1/8 13%
svara NON-VS 0/8 0% NON-VS 0/9 0%
taka VS 5/9 56% NEUTRAL 2/11 18% VS 8/17 47%
vera NEUTRAL 16/72 22% NEUTRAL 17/69 24% NEUTRAL 29/78 37%
verða VS 8/13 62%
vilja VS 5/11 45% NEUTRAL 1/8 13%
bykkja NEUTRAL 4/13 31% VS 7/12 58% VS 5/12 42%
There is no clear candidate for a VS-Verb in Table 4. The best ones,
taka and þykkja, are VS-Verbs in two of the texts, but neutral in the
third text. We may also notice that none of the auxiliaries, i.e., hafa,
munu, skulu, verða and vilja occur as NON-VS-Verbs in the table.
The only consistent result of this pilot study seems to be that verbs of
saying have a tendency to be NON-VS-Verbs: kveða and segja are