Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2000, Qupperneq 97

95
Flugur, smágreinar og umrœðuefni
examples for each expression are given in two groups, literal and
metaphorical. Within each group the examples are ordered according
to meaning and date (presumably that of the manuscript). This makes
quite clear that a certain expression could be used at a certain time, but
not how frequent it actually was. Jón Friðjónsson tries to elucidate the
situation in his Table 2. The only values given in this table are alg.
‘usual’ and sjaldg. ‘rare’, but only 8 of the 32 (for 8 expressions and
4 periods) slots are filled. The reader is left with the interpretation of
the empty slots. It is not possible to interpret an empty slot as this ex-
Ptession did not occur at the period in question’, because that would
leave the second half of the 13th century without any mót expression
ut all. The only reasonable way seems to interpret empty slots to the
ieft of a filled slot as empty indeed, and empty slots to the right of a
filled slot as containing the same value as that filled slot. This, how-
eyer, leaves us for the first half of the 14th century with 6 usual and 2
tare expressions.
A second attempt to show the rise and decline of the various ex-
Pressions is made in Table 3, which gives for 6 texts from the Iceland-
ie Homily book to the Píslarsaga síra Jóns Magnússonar from the 2
half of the 17th century frequencies, but unexplainably for only 6 of
ihe expressions. That two of the abbreviations in the heading of this
table are not explained and a third text is not found in the list of source
texts is a minor irritation. Worse is that in the only case which I can
easily check (the Icelandic Homily Book) the frequencies are incor-
rect. Nobody knows better than I how easy it is to miss examples
when reading through a text, but these were retrievable from Lars-
s°n’s Ordförrádet.
S. Supplementary counts
The Icelandic Homily Book
The Icelandic Homily Book contains 62 sermons and homilies. It
temains undecided how many scribes were involved. There are a num-
ber of places where the ductus changes, but scholars do not agree on
the number of scribes nor on the places where they see a change of
hand. In my edition I have distinguished 14 tentative hands; each