Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2002, Page 77

Það rignir þágufalli á íslandi
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Although this is not a large classs, it is possible to find systematic case
altemations here too, where the verbal object bears dative or
accusative depending on whether or not the object is what gets moved:
(85) Dative object undergoing movement: Accusative object:
hlaða heyinu á vagninn
‘load the hay on the wagon’
umhlaða vörunum
‘restack the goods’
hlaða vagninn með heyi
‘load the wagon with hay’
umhlaða vörubílinn
‘repack the tmck’
Verbs referring to means of transportation generally govem dative.
This use of dative is derived from an old IE instmmental. The means of
transport as well as the passenger undergoes the change of location and
for the following verbs, for instance, it is marked with the dative case:
(86) aka bílnum ‘drive the car’, fljúga flugvélinni ‘fly the plane’,
lenda flugvélinni Tand the plane’, ríða hesti ‘ride a horse’, róa
bátnum ‘row the boat’, sigla skipi ‘sail a ship’
The exceptions are the very common, however, and include the every-
day verb keyra ‘drive,’ which govems accusative: keyra bílinn ‘drive
the car(A)’, keyra hana heim ‘drive her(A) home’; and the verb ferja
‘ferry’:/<?ry'a hanayfir ána ‘ferry her(A) across the river’.25 But as noted
by Jóhanna Barðdal (1992), many younger speakers tend to use dative
for an animate passenger: keyra henni heim ‘drive her(D) home’.
Note that keyra has other uses not referring to means of trans-
portation which also govem accusative: keyra naglann ‘drive the
nail’, keyra öxina í höfuð honum ‘drive the ax into his head’, keyra e-
n niður ‘knock someone down’. The OH collection contains no exam-
ples of keyra goveming a dative object in the relevant sense,26 and the
25 As Kjartan Ottosson points out (p.c.), the verb ferja does not take an object
denoting the means of transportation, only the person/thing transported: ferja fólk-
idlbílirm ‘ferry the people(A)/the car(A)’.
"6 OH has two examples of keyra with a dative object in the sense of beina e-u
fast eða harkalega ‘aim hard or roughly’, which is presumably an instrumental dative:
(i) Siðan keyrði þessi maður hnefanum á skaptið, svo hnífurinn sökk allur.
‘Then this man aimed/drove his fist(D) at the handle, so that the whole knife
sank in.’