Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Side 20
XVIII
tials and have headings. Slightly less than half of the saga is preserved here;
the text it provides is called A' in this edition.
The four modern editions of sagas in S6 which have been mentioned in the
first paragraph above contain extensive descriptions of the language, and the
following account of the language of Mírmanns saga in S6 selects from them
and owes much to them, even when particular references are not given.
Short and long vowels expressed by the same letter are not usually distin-
guished. There is frequently an oblique stroke (acute accent) over /; it serves
to distinguish the / from other letters, and is not reproduced in this edition.
For accents over a and ca see the following.
There is a dot (not printed) over short or long y very occasionally, and over
o in komu 49, and possibly over e in ek 44'.
Short a is written a, with only one exception, aat 929, on which there is
sentence-stress; contrast Blaisdell 1979b, xxvi. The long vowel is also usual-
ly written a, e.g. þa l2, agætr l2, matti l9, but other representations occur: ca
is used c. 37 times for the preposition/adverb, and occasionally (seven times)
in other words, e.g. aa (verb) 215, aaburdar ll41, faatt 462, saa (verb) 624; & is
used c. 18 times for the preposition/adverb, and occasionally (nine times) in
other words, e.g. ái (verb) 445, æhyggiu ll60, uuu 722. A single accent is rare;
only m 1014, á 259, rád 47, 731.
vá appears regularly as vo, uo: kuongadr l4, voro 218, vopnum 820, etc. The
word svá is written eight times with s and the abbreviation for va, e.g. 1l0, but
otherwise it is written with a superscript o (very frequent, expanded as svo),
or it is written out as svo (three times).
Short e is written e, except that ei is used regularly for older short e before
ng, e.g. eingi l9, leingi 26, samteingia 5'3, feingit 7'6. The preterite plural of
ganga is abbreviated at its three occurrences, 740, 96, 987; it has been expanded
as geingo, the spelling used in Konráðs saga, f. 11 lr (Zitzelsberger 1987,
cxxvii) (but fengo l23, fengim 733, both written out, presumably have a long
vowel; cf. Jensen 1983, cxcm). The spelling e is invariable before gi, gj, e.g.
feginn 25, segia 22.
Long e is written e, except that sied is spelled with ie at its three occurren-
ces, l'3, 438 (sVed), 736. The noun vél is spelled with e at 946, but the cor-
responding verb is spelled with œ in væla 6'9. vær is always so spelled.
Short and long i are written i, except that j is used for the preposition/adverb
í, with only one exception (igegnum 1188), and for initial i in nearly one-third of
theinstances, e.g. jn l3,jllu9'8). Unsyncopatedformsofmikill are written with
/ (thirty-five instances); so are mikla 622, miklo 924, 1 15, miklum 997, but y is
written in myklo 245, 736, l44, myklum 1122 (cf. Hreinn Benediktsson 1978, 57).
The negative prefix is normally written o, e.g. ogagn 225. There are two in-
stances of ú (written v): vfagnadar, l26, 75'.