Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 44

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THE FAROESE AUXILIARY VERB MUNNA
plified in (13). It might in fact be thought
that with the three possibilities: mundi
hava + supine, mundi havt + supine and
mundi + supine, and three principal func-
tions: tense marker + uncertainty,
counter-factual conditional and the »near-
miss« function documented by Lockwood
(that in which mundi, mundu + supine »ex-
presses the idea of ’nearly, almost,
hardly’«), speakers would have restricted
each construction to one particular functi-
on, but so far at least no consistent match-
ing of form and function seems to have
taken place. In the case of certain other
modal auxiliaries there is at least a clear-
cut two way distinction, e.g.: kundi fingið
’could get/could have got’, kundi hava/havt
fingið ’could have got’, skuldi gjørt ’ought
to do/ought to have done’, skuldi hava/havt
gjørt ’ought to have done’, but with munna
the rules seem less rigid and therefore less
obvious. Even the »near-miss« construc-
tion may at least sometimes include the
supine of hava. Thus, several informants
affirm that if (13) is altered to read:
(19) Systirin grunaði væl á svarinum,
Eirikur gav henni, at hann mundi
(havt) dripið Símun
(i.e., with or without havt in place of hava),
the sense is: ’His sister suspected strongly
from the answer Eirikur gave her that he
had almost killed Símun.’ Given the ten-
dency in Faroese for one supine to attract
another (cf. Lockwood 1955, 141-3) and
the somewhat hazy semantic dividing lines
between the constructions we have been
discussing (mundi + infinitive ’[+ past], I
suppose’, ’was going to, I suppose’, ’would
surely/doubtless’; mundi + hava + supine
’had most likely’; mundi ± hava/havt +
supine ’would surely/doubtless have’;
mundi ± havt + supine ’almost [+ past]’
(i.e., ’would surely/doubtless have if some-
thing had not intervened’)), it is after all
perhaps not entirely surprising that there
should be some degree of overlap.
However this may be, the rudimentary
analysis I have just attempted does at least
make it possible to understand the contrast
between Lockwood's final pair of exam-
ples:
(20) Mundi eingin Føroyingur vera førur
fyri at taka lut í hesum samráðingum?
means, as has been indicated, something
like: ’Was there really no Faroeman cap-
able of taking part in these negotiations?’,
while:
(21) Mundi eingin Føroyingur verið førur
fyri at tikið lut í hesum samráðingum?
which could be expanded: Mundi eingin
Føroyingur hava/havt verið førur fyri..., is
a counter-factual conditional meaning
approximately: ’Would there really have
been no Faroeman capable of taking part
in these negotiations [if they had been
held]?’
Clearly a great deal more could be said
about the uses of munna. Most modal auxi-
liaries in the Germanic languages provide
formidable problems of description and
munna is no exception. Nevertheless, by
scratching at the surface of the problem I
hope I have at least elucidated one of the
murkier passages in Lockwood 1955, and if
I am lucky I may even have opened up the
ground a little for further investigation and
discussion.