Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 81
THE S RECENSION
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(ii) Gen. and dat. sg. f. and gen. pl. appear both as ‘þessar’, ‘þessi’,
‘þessa’ and as ‘þessaRar’, ‘þessaRÍ’, ‘þessaRa’.
(iii) Dat. sg. n. is occasionally ‘þi(lik-)’ in Hand A, e.g. 10vb5,
31val3, 54vb26.
(iv) Hand A has both hin- and en- article forms; in his part of Jóns
saga as a whole the ratio is about 3:1. The number of en- exx. falls
off markedly however from fol. 59 onwards: on fols. 55-58 the pro-
portion of en- to hin- forms is about 5 : 7, on fols. 59-61 about 1 : 15.5
Hand B has en- forms much less frequently, only six exx. all told in his
Jóns saga text.
(v) One ex. of a weak declined article has been noted, in ‘þessa env
æra menn’ 16ra27.
6. Verbs. (i) The pres. sg. of munu is usually man but mun forms
also occur, found commonly in Maríu saga but rarely in Jóns saga
where the only exx. are in 56ra23, 57vb39 (Hand A), 66rb41 (Hand
B). Augustinus saga has some nine exx. of ‘man’ and only once
‘mvntv’. The Vitae patrum text has some eleven exx. of ‘mvn’, none of
‘man’. Neither scribe appears to have had a preferred form which he
imposed on the text he was copying. Pret. inf. ‘mvndi’ is found in ‘letv
ok bratt mvndi verða bert’ 50ra7.
(ii) Infinitive ‘eiga’ and ‘mega’ are usual, third pl. ‘eigv’, ‘megv’.
(iii) Exceptional spellings are ‘þv tok’ 44va42, cf. ‘þv tokt’ 44vb5;
probably an error since it appears to be matched only by a solitary in-
stance in Hóm.bók (Ordförrádet, 326); ‘vill ek’ 42vb23; ‘þv villt’, no-
ted in both hands but only at 46rbll, 73ra5. First and third person pret.
sg. of hlaupa is ‘hlop’, 7rb29, 12rb5.
(iv) ‘þorði ek’ has been noted at 49va26, but third person endings in
first person forms are evidently extremely rare.
(v) First and second person pl. endings are sometimes dropped but
with no obvious regularity; ‘skolv ver’ and ‘vili þer’ occur alongside
‘skolvm ver’ and ‘vilið þer’.
(vi) Pret. of stíga appears as both ‘ste’ and ‘steig’; the past. part. of
þola as both ‘þol(l)t’ and ‘þolat’.
(vii) Third sg. pret. subj. ‘helpi’ 78rb2 appears to be rather rare, but
5 The exx. are undifferentiated in this counting. There is in fact a clear tendency to re-
strict en- forms to minimal stress positions.