Re: Genitive apposition (and Swedish questions)

Quoting "Douglas Koller, Latin & French" <latinfrench@...>:

> Andreas skrev:
>
> >The piece from the Babel text is in the new official translation:
> >
> >När människorna flyttade österut fann de en dal i Shinar där de bosatte
> sig.
> >
> >Thus, no 'land' at all. Can't be bothered to excavate the old version right
> >now.
>
> Oh here, allow me. Complete with funky verb endings, old spellings,
> *and* genitive apposition (alas, I can't type in Fraktur), it's:
>
> Då de nu drogo österut, funno de en slätt uti Sinears land, och bodde der.
>
> My question is: why "funno"? Currently, it's "finna, fann, funnit",
> which corresponds nicely to German's "finden, fand, gefunden". But
> was it in the hoarfrost of time "finna, funn, funnit" (more akin to
> English "find, found, found"). In other words, why not "fanno"?
While the Germanic languages used to have different singular and plural stems
for these verbs, but German jettisoned the pl ones centuries ago, while
Swedish kept the things as long as it kept separate pl verbs at all (to the
mid-20th C in writing - in speech I think it basically died during the 19th C).

German has kept some pl stem forms in subjunctives, eg _stünde_ instead of
expected _stände_ as imperfect conjunctive of _stehen_. Of course, calling
them "plural" stems makes no sense synchronically, since they're used both in
pl and sg subjunctives, but not in pl indicatives (or imperatives).

> Unrelated questions:
>
> How to read "iakttog"? /jakt.../ or /iakt.../ (don't remember that
> omega-like thing in IPA)?
/i:akt-/. That omegoid thing is no doubt meant to indicate the infamous
labialized [u].

> What does "oavlåtligt" mean? I've looke under that, "avlåtlig", and
> even "låtlig" in the ordbok and there is naught there.
"Uninterruptedly". It's a quirky formation involving _av_ "off", _låta_ "let"
and the adjectivizer _-lig_, plus the adverb-former _-t_.

> What does "ögonen låg för långt in" mean?
"The eyes were too deeply set".

I might rather have said _ögenen satt för långt in_, but that's probably
idiolectal.

> For some context:
> "Ögonbrynen var också svarta, ögonen låg för långt in, som om blicken
> helst ville gömma sig." One can kindasorta guess from context, but
> what exactly is going on here?
>
> Tak så mycket!
That's spelt |tack|, you ignorant furriner! ;)

It's always nice to see outsiders have an interest in Swedish. Esp when it
forces me to realize quite how quirky some of it's features are.

                                                        Andreas

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