Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 228

208
Part Two
to be kept strictly apart for statistical purposes, but since potential of
also occurs before verbs where the particle may occur as well, there is
no means to keep the two entirely separate, and they will therefore of ne-
cessity have to be treated together.
In a study of the same particle published by Ingerid Dal only a year
after the appearance of Kuhn’s book (Dal 1930a, cf. Dal 1930b), his re-
sults were largely confirmed. Dal maintained, however, that the particle
still had some semantic function, namely perfectivation, and she did not
regard the potential of as a separate word (Dal 1930a: 85-88).
Dal’s study was based on the Edda, whereas Kuhn’s analysis was
first and foremost based on skaldic material. His book was in faet an off-
spring of a larger project on the drottkvætt metre, which already in 1929
had occupied the author “seit langerer Zeit” (Kuhn 1929: 4) and was
completed with the publication of his book Drottkvætt only in 1983. The
choice of skaldic poetry was essential in order to achieve the historical
results aimed at by Kuhn, and in tum, the chronology offered by the
skaldic material might be used also in the discussion of the age of Eddie
poetry.
Of the greatest consequence in this respect is Kuhn’s well-known ob-
servation that the overall use of the particle in skaldic poetry decreases
as time passes.2 On the basic assumption that Eddie poetry behaves in
this respect in the same manner as skaldic poetry, this decrease may, ac-
cording to Kuhn, be used as a means of dating Eddie poetry.
This is a most promising idea, and it is well worth trying to assess its
value. I want principally to discuss precisely what kind of conclusions
can reasonably be drawn from this criterion. This chapter should thus be
considered as a kind of exploration of the relationship between statisti-
cal method and philological analysis.
2 As mentioned above, Kuhn found that the particle occurred before nouns in the earliest
period only. In skaldic poetry, which may be confidently dated, there are according to
Kuhn 21 examples of the particle before nouns in the period down to 1030, but only 3 from
the time after, and this may be used in the dating of poems of unknown age (Kuhn 1929:
32-33).
In my opinion these figures are too small to carry any weight, however, and Kuhn had
no success in applying this criterion as a means of dating Eddie poetry. In Eddie poetry he
found 13 instances of the particle before a noun, but as many as 4 of these occur in Sigr-
drifumål, which Kuhn himself considered to be a younger poem, and he had to resort to an
unhappy ad hoc-solution, namely that they had been taken over from an older source
(Kuhn 1929: 33-34).