Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1960, Qupperneq 83

UM ,.B OÐHÁTT LIÐINS TÍMA“
81
SUMMARY
In Vol. 1 of this periodical (pp. 120—126) Prof. Stefán Einarsson published
an article on what he called „the use of the Ipresent] iraperative about past
events" in Old Icelandic. Ile has now sent the Editor a number of additional
examples collected from Old Icelandic sources. These appear in the first part
of the present paper. In the second part, the Editor presents a few general
remarks on this use of the imperative.
A literal translation of one of the above examples (p. 76, from Gautreks
saga) will make it clear what use of the imper. is referred to (the imper. phrase
is italicized):
„Sire,“ lie says, „be cheerful, for here is the shield which you gave
me. Now I wish to present it to you, for it is of no use to me as I have
no other weapons.“ The Earl said: „Give thou the luckiest of all good
men, for it is a great ornament for my hall to have it back again in the
place where it used to hang ...“
In the second part of the present article, it is first pointed out, as Prof.Einarsson
did in his article, that in these phrases the imper. is always accompanied by the
adj. heill (,lucky‘) or armr (,wretched‘), in the positive or the superlative, as
a predicative. (Because of ambiguities of translation, it should be pointed oul
that, in the phrase the luckiest___, the use of the strong (as opposed to the
weak) declension oí the adj. in the lcelandic original shows that this phrase is
not in apposition to the subject (thou) — e. g., in the sense of a vocative — but
18 rather a predicative). The imperative forms themselves, such as gef ,give‘ in
the example above, are analyzed into two meaningful units, morphemes, the
scmantic (or root-) morpheme gef- ,give‘ and the grammatical (or inflectional)
morpheme 0 (zero) ,imper. sg. (2nd pers. pres. act.)‘. The meaning of the second
°f these — the imperative meaning — clearly goes with or refers to the follow-
'ng predicative adjective, implying a wish on the part of the speaker for future
good (or bad) luck to the performer of the action expressed by the verb. There-
f°re, in this case as otherwise, the imper. meaning as such refers, not to past,
^nt to future time.
On the other hand, it is equally clear that the meaning of the former —
the rool-morpheme — refers, not to future time, but to an event of the immediate
Past — to the present just given, in the example above.
Thus, contrary to the general rule, according to wliich the meanings of all
the morphemes of which a form is composed (such as, e. g., gaft ,you gave‘)
refer to the same event or action, the meanings of the two morphemes which
make up each imper. form refer to two different events or actions, one in the
Past, the other in the future. Therefore, the imperative plirase, in this use, may
tSLENZK TUNGA 6