Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 43

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 43
THE FAROESE AUXILIARY VERB MUNNA 47 (14) Hann man eta kjøt can mean: ’He eats meat [regularly], I reckon’, ’He is eating meat [now], I reckon’, or ’He’ll/he’s going to eat meat, I reckon’. Future time is also implicit in straightforward conditionals, in which munna may sometimes be used, e.g. (Hammershaimb and Jakobsen 1891,330); (15) Og tók hann stórafjós av og breyt niður, mundi tað verða honum og øðrum til meina ’And if he took [the] big byre away and pulled [it] down, it would surely be of him and others to [the] suffering (i.e., it would surely bring suffering upon him and others)’ — a reported speech equivalent of the direct: (16) Og tekur tú stórafjós av og brýtur niður, man tað verða tær og øðrum til meina ’And if you take [the] big byre away and pull [it] down, it will surely be of you and others to [the] suffering’ In conditionals, mundi, mundu when followed by an infinitive thus correspond to English ’would’ (with the added feature [+ doubt]) in contrast to non-conditionals such as (10-12) where they simply denote uncertainty and mark tense. Naturally, if mundi, mundu + infinitive is the non-con- ditional preterite equivalent of a present- tense Verb Phrase with future meaning, it will correspond (leaving aside the main semantic feature [+ doubt]) neither to a simple past nor (unambiguously) to ’would’ in English, but rather to ’was going to’, as in: (17) Guðrun bað hann steðga eina løtu - maðurin mundi vera skjótur aftur ’Guðrun asked him [to] stay a bit - the (i.e., her) husband was doubtless going to be quick back (i.e., return quickly)’ Counter-factual conditionals in Faroese may also involve the use of the preterite of munna, but in this case combined with a supine rather than an infinitive, e.g. (Jakobsen 1898-1901, 165): (18) Soleiðis gekk tað eina langa tíð, og idla mundi verið burtur úr, um ikki ein maður, Sakaris nevndur ... hevði hildið seg mentan at beina trødlið burtur ’Thus it went [on for] a long time, and bad would doubtless have been out of, if not a man, Sakaris named, had reckoned himself capable to clear the troll away (i.e., bad would doubtless have come of it, if a man named Sakaris had not reckoned himself capable of getting rid of the troll)’ It seems normally to be possible in such conditionals to insert either the infinitive or the supine of the auxiliary hava ’have’ between mundi, mundu and the supine of the lexical verb. In the case of (18) this would give: idla mundi hava verið buriur úr or idla mundi havt verið burtur úr. The double supine construction appears to be the more common, possibly because other- wise there would be identity of form with the different function of mundi hava exem-
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