Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Síða 40

44
THE FAROESE AUXILIARY VERB MUNNA
explanation, the meaning of mundi in (3)
and (4) seems likely to elude most users of
Lockwood’s manual.
After this batch of examples, we move,
as can be seen, to ones that illustrate a
rather different meaning of mundi, mundu:
»When followed by the supine the past
tense expresses the idea of ’nearly, almost,
hardly’.« The two initial sentences demon-
strate the point reasonably clearly. How-
ever, the contrastive pair that follows, far
from clarifying the matter further, intro-
duces various kinds of uncertainty. Most
native speakers of Faroese I have consulted
(some of whom would replace hugsi with
haldi ’think’) affirm that the embedding of
hon mundi dottið under a verb of ’thinking’
is inappropriate in all but a few contexts.
As one put it: »Hon mundi dottið is a state-
ment you would normally only make if you
knew it had happened; it’s something you
either know or don’t know.« In fact, the
matrix clause Eg hugsi adds little or noth-
ing to the contrast between mundi detta
and mundi dottið and could with advantage
be omitted altogether. With or without Eg
hugsi, however, the precise nature of the
contrast remains unclear. On the one hand
we have mundi dottið with the sense ’nearly
fell’, but on the other a phrase about which
the only certain thing seems to be that it
does not mean ’nearly fell’. Exactly what it
does mean is obscured by the wide range of
English equivalents and the difficulty of
perceiving an appropriate context for such
an utterance.
It is the second contrastive pair, how-
ever, that causes most of my students (and,
I would imagine, most users of the manual)
the greatest difficulty, for here the meta-
phorical ladder really is pulled from under
them. That mundi vera means ’was’ is only
slightly problematic, for Lockwood has al-
ready indicated that in certain, undefined,
contexts mundi detta can mean ’fell’. But
having just learnt that mutidi, mundu +
supine »expresses the idea of ’nearly, al-
most, hardly’«, it is upsetting immediately
to be given an example in which mundi
verið is translated not ’was almost’ but
’would have been'. Yet native speakers all
confirm that Lockwood’s translation here
is accurate.
Clearly something has gone awry with
the presentation of munna. If a new edition
of Lockwood’s Introduction is ever con-
templated, it would be an advantage if this
paragraph were completely rewritten. The
notes that follow are intended as the basis
of a discussion about what such a new para-
graph might usefully contain.
As noted at the outset, it is, I think,
essential to try and explain the general
semantic impact of munna before present-
ing the reader with a range of possible
English translations. With modal auxili-
aries the choice of English equivalents will
naturally vary widely from context to con-
text, style to style and person to person. A
massive battery of examples would be
needed to provide the reader with informa-
tion equivalent to that which could be in-
cluded in a brief description of the verb’s
essential semantic features — and in a text-
book, space for such copious exemplifica-
tion is not normally available.
What information does munna then con-
vey? In what contexts is it appropriate to
use it? Except in those cases mentioned by
Lockwood where mundi is combined with a
supine and means ’nearly, almost, hardly’,
and in archaic style where it can sometimes