Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1965, Qupperneq 65

HJARTA DREPR STALL
63
portance whether the word hvíla was apprehended as abstract
(‘rest’) or concrete (‘bed’), the phrase referent was in both cases the
same. The change of meaning of the Icelandic word is, according to
this terminology, called permutation. But that does not mean that
permutation always is a change from abstract to concrete. We find
quite the opposite in the change of the word stallr (*stallaz).
We have already seen that Proto-Germanic *stallaz was a concrete
word meaning ‘place’. In the phrases faire estal, to make stall and
gjöra stall it has on the other hand acquired an abstract meaning,
i.e., ‘standstill’. This meaning is due to permutation, probably in
such phrases as *slalla neman, where it did not matter whether the
word was apprehended in a concrete sense (‘place’) or an abstract
meaning (‘standstill’).
The same permutation can be seen in some of the Old French and
English phrases which I have mentioned above, and the same applies
to most of the Icelandic variants of the phrase in question.
3) The impersonal construction slall drepr ór hjarla most pro-
bably is formed after the pattern of hljóð drepr ór e-m, 78 which
Cleasby-Vigfússon translates “somebody becomes silent.” But never-
theless stallr has here, by permutation, got the meaning ‘standstill’.
The fact that the verb drepa could in some contexts have the mean-
ing ‘cause, make’, e.g., drepa slóð ‘to make a track’, 70 has probably
also contributed to this development. The expression drepa stall has
thus been apprehended as equivalent to ‘cause standstill’. In the im-
personal construction drepa has a passive meaning. Stall drepr ór
hjarta thus means ‘the standstill is knocked out of, i.e., is driven
away from, the heart’ or in other words ‘the heart beats violently’.
4) Hjarta er e-m drepit í stall can be explained through the same
permutation. Its proper meaning is ‘somebody’s heart is knocked to
standstill, i.e., is brought to standstill’ or in other words ‘stops
beating’.
5) Stallr kemr í hjarta e-m may he explained in the same way,
78 Fornmanna sögur XI, 115.
70 Skjaldedigtning B I, 336 = A I, 365—366; B 1, 573 = A I, 578.