Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 82
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INTRODUCTION
was clearly inherited (see Hms. II, 395 n. 2); cf. Jón Þorkelsson, Beyg-
ing sterkra sagnorða, 203.
(viii) Pret. subj. forms of búa(st) are ‘biavggi’ 20va2, ‘bioggiz’
51ra22; pret. pl. of höggva is ‘hioggv’ 27rb41-42, past. part. adj.
‘havggvinn’ 28ra25, 38, and elsewhere.
(ix) Pret. pl. offlýja is ‘flvðv’ 43vb9.
(x) First person sg. and pl. middle voice forms are in <umz)/<umzt);
first pl. subj. in <imz)/<imzt) (‘lærimzt’ 2vb33). Note ‘ek ... baðvmz
fyrir’ 7rbl0, the form that might be expected in the early fourteenth
century.
(xi) The middle voice ending elsewhere is <z> and <zt), appearing in
a ratio of about 4 : 1 in Hand A’s part of Jóns saga. He shows a firm
tendency to prefer <zt) in past parts. (they account for nearly half of
his <zt> exx.). Hand B in Jóns saga has <zt> slightly more often than
<z>, a ratio of about 5 : 4.6 The ending <st> appears after r, e.g. in Jóns
saga ‘spyrst’ 58rbl (Hand A), ‘barst’ 65ra37, ‘ferst’ 66ra24 (Hand B);
and elsewhere also after / and n: ‘dvelst’ 6ra20, Teynst’ 27val8,
‘reynst’ 49vbl5.
(xii) The ratios in the other texts written by Hands A and B may be
worth observing. At the beginning of Antonius saga <zt> outnumbers
<z> by about two to one7 but the preponderance is gradually reversed
so that in the middle of the text <z) outnumbers <zt> by about 6 : 1 and
by the end of the text the ratio of <z> to <zt> is about 13:1. The same
ratio holds good in the following Páls saga, fols. 19vb24-22. The ear-
ly part of the following Maríu saga shows a ratio of about 4 : 1 but <z)
prevails as the text progresses and appears in a ratio of about 8:1. The
Augustinus saga text in Hand B, fols. 67ral9-73, shows a ratio not
very different from that observed in his part of Jóns saga, about four
<zt> to five <z>, but the Vitae patrum text, fols. 74v-78r, shows <z> far
in the ascendant, with about eight instances to one of <zt>.
7. Adverbs. (i) The neg. adv. is ‘eigi’, abbreviated ‘e’’ and ‘ég’; ‘ei’
occurs only in Hand B in the Vitae patrum at 74va25, 75rb6, 9,
75val8.
6 Hand B cannot be seen to be much influenced by the exemplar S1 in this particular.
Of some 38 exx. of <z) in the S1 remnants Hand B writes <zt) for 23 of them.
7 The Thómas saga fragments show a similar ratio.