Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 13.07.1981, Page 221

JANEZ ORESNIK
On Some Icelandic Irregular Imperative
Singular Forms
Spoken modern Icelandic possesses a few irregular imperative singular
(— imp. sg.) forms, some of which will be discussed in the present
paper. They include, keyptu of kaupa ‘buy’ (section 1), attu of etja ‘egg
°n’ (section 2), kýs{tu) of kjósa ‘choose’ (section 3), and (Old Icelandic)
sé(8u) of vera ‘be’ (section 4).1
1- The regular imp. sg. of kaupa ‘buy’ is kauptu. While this form does
exist, it is more and more common to say keyptu instead of kauptu (Jón
Friðjónsson 1978:320). The imp. keyptu is an irregular formation con-
taining the non-present stem keyp- (cf. the lp. sg. pret. ind. lceypti),
rather than the expected present stem kaup- (cf. the lp. sg. pres. ind.
kaupi).
The oldest examples of keyptu known to me occur in the manuscript
Add. 11.177 (British Museum), from the latter half of the seventeenth
century (most probably the manuscript originates from Vestfirðir). For
the examples see Jón Helgason 1962a:54 v. 1.; for the dating and pro-
venance of the manuscript see ibidem, XVI.
The origin of the imp. keyptu has been briefly discussed by Jón
Helgason (1970:XLV), who writes concerning the language of the
manuscript Lbs. 276 fol (frorn 1861-68): “Imperativ af ‘yrkja’ er orktu
194 (efter præt. plur. 3. person, som i en række verber havde samme
form som imperativ med tilfpjet subjekt, jfr. at man nu kan h0re en
lrap. ‘keyptu’ for ‘kauptu’).” Jón Helgason’s terse explanation will here
be freely interpreted as follows. A number of Icelandic verbs (i. e. most
lun- and én-verbs, more than 700 in all, to judge by the lists in Valtýr
Guðmundsson 1922:137ff.) have long imp. forms formally identical
Wlth the 3p. pl. pret. ind. of those verbs.2 E.g. the imp. heyrðu of heyra
1 My thanks are due to Miss Margaret G. Davis, who has corrected my English.
2 The term LONG IMPERATIVE refers to the variant of the imp. sg. con-
taining the affixed personal pronoun þú. The term SHORT IMPERATIVE, which
0ccurs elsewhere in the main text, refers to the variant of the imp. sg. containing