Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1965, Side 60

58 HALLDÓR HALLDÓRSSON
3) We shall now see what we can get through comparison with
other languages.
In Old High German we find the phrase stal geban in the meaning
‘suspend, cease’ (“etwas einstellen, womit aufhören”). Many in-
stances of it are found in glossaries with the translations “cessare,”
“deesse” and “abesse.” It is also twice found in Otfrid.09 In
Grimm’s Wörterbuch the phrase is given under the meaning “das
stehen, stillstehen,” but that is certainly not correct. The word stal is
in this case surely not abstract. The phrase is in fact in important
points in accordance with the Old Icelandic phrase geja slað(ar)
‘to stop’, of which certain instances are found. And staðr has not
and has never had the abstract meaning ‘standstill’. The German
phrase would in Icelandic he *gefa stall.
4) The German word stal(l) was taken as a loanword in Old
French in the form estal. The French word is found in phrases which
most probably have German prototypes, e.g. prendre estal (“prendre
place, prendre position, s’arréter pour combattre”). The German
prototype seems to have been *stal neman, whicli reminds one of
Icelandic nema stað(ar), of which many instances are found in Old
Icelandic and which is still much used in Modern Icelandic in the
form nema staðar. The Icelandic equivalent to the Old French and
the presumed Old High German phrase would have been *nema
stall. In Old French we also find faire eslal, which has an unmistak-
able likeness to the Icelandic phrase variant gjöra stall, and se
mettre á estal, both with the meaning ‘to stop’.70
In the phrase faire estal and in the English phrases, which I am
now going to discuss, the word has an abstract meaning. I shall later
on explain how this abstract meaning originated.
5) In English we find instances of the following phrases of this
type: to bring to slall (“to bring to a stand, to fix, settle”), lo make
stall, to take stall, to keep at stall (“to make a stand, take up a posi-
09 Deutsches Wörterbuch X 2 1, 595.
70 See Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de L’ancienne Langue Franqaise III
(Paris 1884), 592.