Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Síða 89

ous. In these categories, án governs the accusative (as in án rétta refsing
‘without lawful punishment’), dative (án krossi ‘without a cross’), and gen-
itive (án allrar vægðar ‘without all mercy’). In some instances, it is impos-
sible to identify which case án governs because the prepositional object
has the same form in two or more cases. In Icelandic, this happens fre-
quently, as in endi ‘end’ (masculine an-stem), hræzla ‘fear’ (feminine ōn-
stem), and leyfi ‘leave’ (neuter ija-stem). These instances were labelled
“unclear.” In the last category, án does not appear with an object, which
is presumably omitted by ellipsis, and is categorized as “Not Given
(N.G.).” Such examples are of the type betra at hafa en án at vera ‘better
to have (it) than to be without (it)’.

4. The preposition án and Norwegianisms
4.1 Examples from Early Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian manuscripts
This chapter discusses the frequency of án based on the Old Icelandic and
Old Norwegian manuscripts. Data were retrieved from available word in -
dices and the electronically searchable transcriptions in MENOTA. For the
indices, relevant examples were retrieved by looking up the preposition
án/ón. The examples from MENOTA were retrieved applying [lemma=
“án“]/[lemma=“n“]. The proper noun Án was removed manually.
Tables 1 and 2 show the occurrence of án in Old Icelandic and Old
Norwegian texts, respectively. The most frequent category in each work
is marked in dark shading, and the second most frequent in light shading.
Manuscripts with no relevant examples were excluded from the tables.
The distribution of the prepositional case of án is different in Old Ice -
landic (Table 1) and Old Norwegian texts (Table 2). Table 1 indicates that,
excepting the ambiguous cases, the dative was the most frequent case in
the Old Icelandic texts (3a–b):
(3) a. Etke má vígia ón croſſenom.
nothing can consecrate without cross-the(D)
‘Nothing is allowed to consecrate without the cross.’
(Holm. perg. 15 4to:18r16)
b. ok gıptız hon Valgardı an raðı allra frænda ſína
and married she Valgarðr without consent(D) all kinsmenʼs her-own
‘and she married Valgarðr without all her kinsmenʼs consent.’
(AM 132 fol.:11ra6)
Case government of the Icelandic preposition án 89