Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Side 88

3. Materials and methods
3.1 Text sources
To discuss historical changes in the case government of the preposition
án, it is necessary to collect phrases that include án from different histor-
ical sources. In this study, examples were extracted through various word
lists/indices (Larsson 1891, 1956, Holtsmark 1955, van Arkel-de Leeuw
van Weenen 1987, Beck 1993, Fix 1984, and de Leeuw van Weenen 2004,
2009, 2018), as well as the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA).
Furthermore, án was searched from Guðbrandsbiblía (1584) at the website
of Hið íslenska biblíufélag (‘The Icelandic Bible Society’). The study also
searched for examples in the New Testament (1540), translated by Oddur
Gottskálksson; the search was based on an electronic version of the text
in normalized modern orthography on Wikiheimild. Then, as án governed
all oblique cases, its prepositional objects were manually categorized ac -
cording to morphological case.
In addition, the present study consulted other dictionaries/archives
including Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP) and Ritmálssafn Orða -
bókar Háskólans (ROH). However, they only provide representative ex -
amples that cannot be analyzed quantitatively. For contemporary Ice -
landic, Mörkuð íslensk málheild (MÍM) was used.

3.2 Case categorization
For the analysis carried out in this article, examples were classified into
five categories. The first three categories are morphologically unambigu-
Yuki Minamisawa88
(ii) Eg må det ikkje von.
I can that not without
‘I canʼt do without that.’ (Nynorskordboka)
For Faroese, Poulsen (1977) reports the use of ón, which he found in a letter written in
1973, see (i). Although the word does not seem commonly used in Faroese, it is registered
in Føroysk orðabók (Poulsen et al. 1998:871). Norwegian Nynorsk has the adjective von,
used in fixed expressions like (ii). Since Faroese often uses kunna ‘know, be able (to)’
instead of mega (Poulsen 1977:656), these examples are obviously parallel. Finally, there is
even a variant in which v was added, which can be seen in the Norwegian von (Torp
1919:872). The reason for this addition is not clear, but it may have been due to influence
of the verb vera ‘be’ and seems to have originally been East Norwegian (Hægstad 1916:170,
Seip 1955:301).