Gryte van der Toorn-Piebenga

het bijzonder over zi¡n Frisisk Sproglære. Leeuwarden: FryskeAkademy.

Rask, R. 1818. Undersùgelse om det gamle Nordiske elter ^tslondskeSprogs Oprindelse. Kjöbenhavn: Paa den Gyldendalske Boghand-lings Forlag.

Rask, R.K. 1825. FrÍsisk Sproglere ud.arbejd.et eftër samme plon som

den ¡slondske og angelsaksiske. Kjöbenhavn: Beekens Forlag.

Rask, R.K. 1832. Friesche Sprøakteer. (Met enige veranderingen uithet Deensch vertaald door M. Hettema.) Leeuwarden: H.C.

Schetsberg.

Rask, R.K. 194l-68. Breve fra og ¿i¿ Rosmus Rdsk. (Udg. ved LouisHjelmslev, I-II, og Marie Bjerrum, III.) København: Ejnar Munks-gaards Forlag.

(Translated from Norwegian by E.W. Hansen)

70

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr.

THE SO-CALLED TMPERSONAL VERB'-CONSTRUCTION

IN OLD FRISIAN

In his Einführung ín dos Friesische, Bo Sjölin (1969:73) listed the study

of the style and syntax of Old Frisian texts among what he saw as the

more important desideroto of Old Frisian studies, adding that such an

investigation'würde wahrscheinlich auch interessante Resultate erge-

ben'.I The appearance, within three years of this observation, of three

books on Old Frisian syntax (Bor l97l; Van de Velde l97la, 1971b)

certainly brought about a change in the situation wherein this aspect

of Old Frisian had been virtually neglected - a change which made

Paolo Ramat (1976:186, note 4) even speak of a Wíed,erbelebung (see

further Bremmer 1984:41l, note 4).

The great landmark in grammatical studies, Van Helten's Altost-

friesische Grammattk (1890) - outdated but not yet superseded - was

solely devoted to phonology and morphology.2 Theodor Siebs'contribu-

tion to Hermann Paults Grundr¿ss (1901), impressive and invaluable as

it is, did not surpass Van Helten in this respect. Of the three primers

intended, one supposes, for introducing Old Frisian at undergraduate

level, Steller's Abriss d.er altfriesischen Grammatik (1928), Heuser's

Altfriesisches Lesebuch (190Ð, and Cumminst A Grammar of the Old

Fríesic Language (1881), only the last one made a serious attempt at

presenting a survey of the most important syntactical principles of Old

Frisian. Unfortunately, Cumminsr remarks are not always reliable, in

this area, as elsewhere in his book, and one quotation may suffice to

illustrate this:

7l

RoIf lJ. Bremmer Jr.

There is no strict necessity in Friesic for any precisecollocation of the word in the sentence, for the inflectionsare an infallible (italics mine, RHB) guide to the sense, as inGerman, Latin, Icelandig and other highly inflected lan_guages (p. iS).

It would indeed not be difficult to dismiss cummins'book here and nowas the work of a dilletante, but that is not the point I want to make.What he realized was the neecl for a chapter on syntax in anintroduction to old Frisian. This can be accounted for, I think, partlyby the fact that cummins was a speaker of a highly analyticallanguage, whereas Heuser and Steller, as users of a language which inmany respects stands much closer to old Frisian, may have been lessaware of the desirability of a section on syntax in primers. on theother hand, it is also arguable that, had Van Helten and/or Siebsdevoted any serious attention to syntax, this would almost certainlyhave been reflected in Heuserrs and Steller's works, or, for thatmatter' in sjölin's Einführung which rikewise, as far as its grammaticalsections are concerned, does not go beyond phonology and morphology.It is revealing in this respect, I think, that Markey (l9gltl64_72),albeit in a rudimentary way, does find a place for syntax.

shortly after stelerrs Abriss, there appeared two studies onmatters syntactic. The first was Hanschke's Der Gebrauch der Kcsusi'm Artostfriesischen (1929), which despite its subtitle, Nominotiv und,4kkusotÍv, also has a good deal to say on verbs complemented bygenitive and/or dative objects. The other, Hermann,s Attertümrichesurrd Ei.gentümliches im Fries¿schen (1937), is more of a mixed bag of -lexicological and syntactical observations. Regarding syntax, he offerssome valuable information on e.g. certain peculiar usages of thegenitive and dative, both with respect to old Frisian and Modern westFrisian, as well as to North Frisian.

If anything, the search for something eigentümLich has stamped

72

The Impersonal Verbr-Construction in Old Frisian

syntactic studies in Frisian; for Modern west Frisian this concernsparticularly the way in which it contrasts with Dutch. on occasion,historical syntax is drawn into this argüment. A nice example in pointis the typically Modern líest Frisian structure of the so-calledÍmpero tivus pro ínf i.nítivo:

(t) It is de muoite wurdich en lêz dit.It is worth the effort to read thisr.

In his search for the origin of this remarkable construction, TeakeHoekema (1958) discovered that in Old Frisian, instead of an impera-tive, the position after the conjunction en was taken up by an

infinitive, as it still is today in North Frisian:3

Q) Dåt äs nint än lååke ätj.tThat is nothing to laugh aboutt

Hoekema convincingly demonstrated that the rise of the modernconstruction could be accounted for by three facts: l) ü¡e infinitivefollowed the conjunction en(de) and preceded the direct object just as

in an ordinary imperative sentence; 2) the form of the infinitive andthe imperative plural of the large class of -Ío verbs (r¡ainly weakverbs class 2) were falling together by the end of the old Frisianperiod. This obscured the identity of the verb form in the second partof the construction. 3) Finally, when the imperative plural disappearedfrom the language, the plural form of the -ia verbs, curiously enough,replaced the singular form. By misinterpretation, the -ío infinitivesfollowing en(de) then came to be reanalyzed as imperatives, and hencethe original infinitives of non -ia verbs were replaced by the impera-tives of this latter group of verbs. The oldest example of the newsituation which Hoekema adduced to prove his hypothesis dates from1852 (Hoekema 1958:22). However, the coming into existence of the

73

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

ímperativus pro tnfinittvo may not have taken so long as Hoekema'sexample seems to suggest. As early as 1539 we find:

Ø ...dat Douwo Gerbrentzoon schil halden ende bruek sexjeren lanck dye selfte voers(creuen) camp lands O III 53,l2-3, 1539.

'that D.G. should have and use the aforementioned pieceof land for the period of six years'.

llhether this example stands isorated I cannot say.a what it does show,is that the conditions as described by Hoekema could elicit animperative form much earlier than his survey would suggest. Conse_quently, a systematic investigation into the Middle Frisian texts (c.l'50-1800) is likely to yield more examples of this construction. Inother words, if it is so that the study of Frisian syntax has beendirected especiaily to what is eígentümlich, then it is at .reast asinteresting to know to what extent it is ortertümrich, to use Hermann,sterms.

The subject I want to discuss in the present paper is that of the so-called'impersonal verb'or rsubjectless verbr construction. It is a topicwhich, especially for English, has been well studied, but, to myknowledge, never so for Frisian.s My reasons for discussing it arethreefold: l) tr¡e obsolescence of the construction in Modern westFrisian justifies drawing attention to it for the ordest stage of thelanguage; 2) lexicographers have sometimes negrected the semanticand grammatical implications of certain .impersonar verbs; 3) editors,because of an insufficient awareness of the construction, have over-looked some problems emanating therefrom.

what are 'impersonal verbt or rsubjectless verb' constructions?First of all, traditionalry arranged under this heading, there are a

The 'Impersonal Verbr-Construction in Old Frisian

number of verbs denoting weather conditions or time references, such

as ModWFris it fruest 'it freezes', i.t skímeret'it is getting dark', where

Ít, though formally the subject, really is empty because it has no

referent. Probably due to the nature of the content of most texts,

which are preponderantly legal in nature, this type is rarely met with.

I found only one example:

(4) hwant hit wayt ende stormit alle daghen Fr.Br. l, 4-5,

I 489.

'for it is blowing and storming all days'.

The impersonal verb construction that is my main concern involves

predicates which lack a subject in the nominative, but have a pseudo-

subject in the dative case, instead. The predicate, as a rule, occurs in

the 3rd person singular, but is not restricted to a particular tense or

mood (apart from the imperative). In Otd Frisian there are basically

three types of syntactic structure in which the impersonal predicate

can be found, this being wholly in congruence with the other OId

Germanic languages. They are:

A. Jef him friunda berste F IX, 145.

- 'If he lacks relativesf.

B. Jefta scriuere thinze thet...F [X,239-40.

'If it seems to the legal official that...'.

C. Indeen ioe bylyaft dae penningen...op to lidzen

20, ll-2, 1528.

Tf it pleases you to pay the moneyr.

Fr.Br.

In constructions of type A the predicate is complemented by an

animate object in the dative which functions as the pseudo-subject.

That is to say, in paraphrases or translations this constituent can be

assigned the role of subject. As seen in the example of type A, the

7475

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr.

predicate can also be accompanied by a complement in the genitive, inthis case friunda (gen. pl.), usually expressing rthe cause or theoccasion of the action or state denoted by the verb it qualifies, (Visser1963:s30), and is therefore conveniently termed the causative object.This causative object can arso take the form of a prepositionar phrase.Some examples of the latter are:

(J) hyaerrn angede fan dae slotheren G.Fr.2l0, l2_3.Ithey were afraid of the lords of the castler.

(6) Nawet allena tha keninge ond th¿sse bode nogade HZxIV, 93.

'Not only the king was pleased by this message'.(7) ende mischide enich menscha om den nemma O Il 29,

65, 1450.

'and if to anybody should befall harm because of thatnamet.

Examples of a genitival causative object, as far as my evidence goes,on.ly occur with verbs denoting'lack'(cp. Bor 197 l:5.3.2.3), e.g.:

(8) Berst him thera etha F VI, 4.rlf he lacks the oaths'.

(9) Ief him des ontbreckt J III, 6.tlf he lacks this'.

(10) Hwette datlem sa sÍnes ti.uges brecht 82V\,93.'To whatever killings there is lack of a witness'.

(lt) Sa huette (d.sg.) dadslachta (g.pl.) sines tiuges brecht -E3rv

' 93.rTo whatever (of) killings there is lack of a witness'.

Examples (lo) an¿ (lt) seem to contradict the rule that the pseudo-subject should be animate. From the context it is crear, however, that

76

The {mpersonal Verb'-Construction in Old Frisian

behind the abstract nouns dotlem and dadslach¿o we must think of the

man who is accused of these crimes.

In structures of type B, the impersonal verb construction is

complemented by a thot-clause. Although in a way this thot-clause can

be analyzed as the subject, it is generally agreed that in origin it is the

causative object; for one thing because it never occurs before the

predicate. Sentences of this type are rare:

(12\ Nu riowath mi wirklik sere do¿ íc a ief dine reed J XIX,

137-8.

'Now I regret truly indeed that I ever gave that advice'.

(13) So leet ic jenna wita dat ws ser anghet dot ws nen

Iowuc scel holda O II 132,3, 1486.

'Therefore I inform you that we are very afraid that no

inheritance will remain for us'.

This type already occurs in the oldest texts with a provisional subject'

the demonstrative thet, which seems to indicate that at an early stage

it was considered to be offensive to the rule that a predicate should be

provided with a subject. I call this type the quasi-impersonal construc-

tion:

(t4) To tha lesta bihagade thetta hera tha biscope...thet...

E2Vlll, 3-5.

'At last it pleased the lord bishop...that...r.

(15) De¿ sa mei ther dochterskind nout bischian thet... F

xx, g5-6.

'That may not happen there to the daughter's child that

In all likelihood, these provisional subjects appeared in the genitive at

an earlier stage in the language, as is shown by similar cases in Middle

Dutch or Middle Low German.6

77

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

Finally, in structures of type C, the impersonal verb constructionis comp.lemented by an infinitive:

(16) ws ... noeget ende biliaeft te ontfaen O I jl4, 39, 1506.

'it satisfies and pleases us to receiver.(17) Juwer eerberheir noghie tho wí.jten Ol241, l, 1473.

'May it please your honour to know'.(18) Hyrop bejaerye ic...dat joe bellyaeue my...antv/o(t toe

scriuen Fr.Br. 44, 9-10, 1541.

'Hereupon I wish that it would please you to write me

an answerr.

As we saw with the thot-clauses of type B, here too constructions witha provisional subject are competing with the subjectless construction:

(19) wanneer dattet hyoe solde belyaeve toe Lyoerd toecommen Fr.Br. 44, 6-7, 1541.rat what time it may please you to come to L.r.

A curious instance of type c is a construction with steet rstandsr,

always accompanied by the infinitive Iiowo 'believe':

(20) Ende synt hia twydrachtich, soe steet hierum naet toliewen Pa VII, 400-01.

(21) Hwaso contraríum sprect in syn riucht, dam steet naetto lyowen Ro I, 20.

(22) Twam of trem steet een wird to lijowen Ro XV, 64.

Literally, examples (20) and (21) could be translated as follows:

(20) 'And if they are disagreeing, then (it) stands to themnot to believe'.

78

The Impersonal Verb'-Construction in Old Frisian

(21) 'Whoever speaks contraríum in his law-case, to him (it)

stands not to believet.

But, whereas in examples (16) through (19) the action described by the

infinitive refers to the pseudo-subject, the result of which can be

paraphrased as twe receivet, tyour honour kriowst, tyou write an answer

to mer, 'you come to L.r, respectively, this is not possible for examples

(20) and (Zl). ffre result cannot be paraphrased as 'they do not / he

does not believe', but rather as'they are / he is not to be believed'. Aproper translation of these sentences would be: If they are disagree-

ing, it is proper for them not to be believed', and 'Whoever speaks

contrarium in his law-case, to him it is proper not to be believed'.7

Example (22) tnen becomes:'To two or three it is proper to believe a

word'. But the place of the negation in example (23) presents a certain

difficulty:

(23) hwant een man steet neen wird to lyowen Ro III, 9.tFor it is proper for one man to believe not a wordt +

'For it is not proper for one man to believe a word'.

Intuition, not always a safe guide, tells one to expect a negation

preceding the predicate, as is the case with Middle Dutch, e.g.:

(24) maer mi ne staets niet te vertelne (Mnl.Wb., s.v. stcen

c.2).

'but it is not proper for me to tell itr.

Before proceeding to some other problematic passages, it is necessary

to make a few more general remarks with respect to impersonal verb

constructions. Regarding their distribution, they were a feature of allthe Indo-European languages, though in many of them they have

79

become obsolete, as also in Germanic. Not altogether surprisingly,perhaps, they are still current in the two most highly inflectedlanguages, Icelandic and High German. They have, however, complete_ly disappeared from the English ranguage, apart from such archaicphrases as meseems, methinks. The same can be said for Dutch medunkt and Frisian me tinkt. Just how rare they are today is exemp-lified by the treatment of ¿inke 'to seern' irr the new Frisian-Dutchdictionary (Zantema 1984). Without any notice it is lumped amongstforms of the verb tinke tto think'. As was the case in English, at anearly stage Gmc *þcnkjan and xþunk¡hn had become homonyms, as Vander Gaaf (1904:80) arready observed in the pilot study of Englishimpersonal verb constructions, although this was for different rea-sons.8 Nonetheless, syntactically the Modern west Frisian descendantscan still be kept apart.

concerning the origin of the impersonal verb construction, it isheld that it has developed from such simple utterances as: '(there is)thirst-in-me', in which the noun eventually was verbalized, resulting intme thirstst (von seefranz-Montag l9g4 524-Ð. syntactic patterns ofthe type Dative object + 'to be' + noun were quite common in the oldGermanic languages (wagner 1959:54-7, from which the following twoexamples have been taken), e.g.:

(2Ð Nt ys lðodum wën orleghwTle Beo 291Ob-lla.rNow there is for the people expectation of time ofwart.

(26) ON ifi er mé á at... Háv 108.tdoubt is on me thatr + rI doubt that...'.

of this type I have encountered only one example in old Frisian so far,which in a way is interesting, because it occurs in a passage whichseems to have missed an opportunity of using more such impersonalconstructions:

80

The lmpersonal Verbt-Construction in Old Frisian

(27) is hi torstich, is hi hongerich, is him hete, is him kalde Jxvl, g.

'be he thirsty, be he hungry, be he hot, be he cold'('...bethere heat for him, be there cold for him).

One will notice that the first pair of thesè conditions is rpersonal',

whereas the second one is rimpersonal'. Moreover, that this type was

not common anymore at the close of the Old Frisian period is

suggested by the only other manuscript containing this text, whichreads:

(28) ... is hij toerstich, is hij hongerich, is heet jefta kald Ro

LIX, lg.

Either the scribe has misunderstood the text he was copying, or thepronoun him was mistakenly left out between is and heet, but in itspresent state the reading of Ro is corrupt, and it is evident that thereading of J is the one to be preferred.

My next remark concerns the case in which the pseudo-subject

appears. As I said earlier on, this is the dative. Attention should be

drawn to this fact, because in Old English, Middle Dutch, Old HighGerman and Old Saxon, besides the dative, there occurred also theaccusative; for example, OE hine longaþ'he longsr, OHG mÍch belangetrI longr. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Old Frisianevidence is limited by two factors: l) its rarity of occurence does notpermit one to draw firm conclusions thereanent, and 2) part of thealready slender evidence is inconclusive since the lst and 2nd personal

pronouns sg./pl. do not distinguish in form between dative and accusa-

tive. Nor, especially in late Old Frisian, do nouns always show theirproper case endings. But where distinction is possible, viz. in the 3rdsg./pl. pronouns, demonstratives and strong adjectives, the case isalways dative. Preference for the dative over the accusative in

8l

mer

l

I

I

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

impersonal verb constructions seems to be typical for Middle Dutchand Old Saxon (Klein 1979:445-6), a tendency shared by Old Frisian,therefore.

My final general remark concerns the question: which verbs can

appear in an impersonal construction? When I started my investigation

I set out by finding the Old Frisian cognates of the Old English and

Middle Dutch verbs which behave like that, and indeed, this proved tobe successful. It also soon appeared, however, that this was not a l0O%

reliable method. It turned out that the condition is not lexicallydetermined, but semantically. Following the approach of Willy Elmer(1981), we can arrange the impersonal verbs under a limited number ofclasses. They are RUE, verbs denoting regret or dismay; PLEASE,

verbs denoting pleasure or satisfaction; BEHOVE, verbs denoting need,

necessity or moral obligation; HAPPEN and SEEM. Semantically,therefore, these verbs form a closed group, but lexically an open one.

For Old Frisian I have thus far found the following verbs:

The Impersonal Verbr-Construction in Old Frisian

(Zantema 1984:s.v. eangie), but no illustration of it is given, and theentry bears every indication of having been merely copied fromprevious lexicographical works (e.g. Buwalda 1952-6; Sytstra and Hof

19252189). I have been informed by Jarich Hoekstra (Fryske Akademy,

Ljouwert) that it is boeketaal 'bookish language', and as such the

phrase is no longer current anymore. It is remarkable that Hofmann(1985:190, at S. l5l.ll) in his welcome revised edition of Holthausen,s

,AltfrÍesisches Wörterbuch has thought it worthwhile to improve on

Holthausen, and to alert the reader to the impersonal usage of ongic.

Of all the verbs that can or do behave in this way, it is the only one tohave received this new information. Holthausen gave a reflexivetranslation of cngia 'sich ängstigen', which might suggest that the verb

was used in this way in Old Frisian, but this is not the case. However,

a reflexive construction could be an alternative for the impersonal

one. A clear example in point is that of forwondrfo 'to wonder'¡

(29) ende hyereem forwonderde seer fan dit wonderlicke

wirck G.Fr. 217r 26.

'and they wondered very much about this wondrous

contraptionr.

Besides this impersonal use of forwondrio, there are a few instances of

reflexivization:

(30) Karolus foerwonderde hem seer G.Fr. 212, 34.

'Charlemagne wondered (himself) very much'.(31) deer wy wz toe mael seer in forwondria O II ll3, 11,

t483.

'about which we wonder (ourselves) greatly'.

RUE:

PLEASE:

BEHOVE:

HAPPEN:

SEEM:

hriowa fregretr, cngic tfeart, forwondría twondert

hagia, (bihagia), liovio, geliavía 'please'; mishogia 'dis-please'; nogía, onnogio 'please, satisfylbersta, breka, on-, untbreka 'lack'; bero, fogio, stcn 'bepropert

skio, beskÍo, to faru komma, onfalta 'happen', folskro'happen completely', misskio 'happen badlyr

thinza, thínka'seem', to mode komma'occur'

As I said above, Modern West Frisian, apart from the petrified phrase

me tinkt 'it seems to met, does not know the impersonal constructionin the true sense anymore. In fact, the only other èxample I was ableto cull from the latest dictionary is the phrase my eanget T fear'

82

A curious instance of a mixture of three constructions is offered by

the following example:

83

Rolf H. Bremmer Jr.

02) Fan disse palmbaem worden dae Ulixbonenses, dat isdat steedfolck, hemmen seer foerwonderde G.Fr. 208,

4l-3.

'About this palmtree the U., i.e. the people of the citi,r,

were greatly surprised'.

The three underlying constructions must be, I presume:

xFan disse palmbaem worden dae U. seer foerwonderd

hemmen seer foerwonderde

dae U. hemmen seer foerwonderden.

In other words, a passive, an impersonal and a reflexive constructionhave been concocted into one, probably because the scribe was led

astray by the explanatory clause he added after UlÍrbonenses.

Another instance of reflexivization is offered by nogia:

(33) dat Simens...kinden...hyarm schillet noghie leta O I474, 14, 1503.Ithat Simonts children must let themse.lves be satisfied'.

Finally, to round off this survey, I should like to draw attention toanother type of impersonal construction, viz. that of a form of theverb wesso 'to be' plus adjective. Semantically, such combinations tiein with the five troups discussed above, in the following cases ranging

themselves under the classes RUE and PLEASE:

OÐ Hit ne se that ta clagere liauere se thet... H2 XXIII, gjrUnless it be more pleasing to the plaintiff that...t.

ßÐ Tha was him lethe to mode Steller, pp. 123-4.

'Then it was loathsome to him in his heart'.

84

mp uction in Old Frisian

In the remainder of this paper I should like to discuss a number ofsentences that have presented problems relating to the impersonal

verb construction.

(36) Sa huasa mith enre clagi bigripin werth and to ovirher-neson hagath Rzlll, l-2.

This sentence has been the subject of some discussion, the problem

apparently being: what is the subject of hagath? Van Helten (1907:

270) made the following observation:

Dem zusammenhang zufolge ist für der hervorgehebene pas-

sus eine bedeutung 'und neigt zu, sich gefällt in ungehorsam'

zu gewärtigen. Ich möchte darum unter berufung von ags.

onhagian 'gefallen' und mnl. in personaler function für 'sichgefallen inr verwantem behagen (s.Mnl.Wb.I, 727) vorschla-gen, zu lesen to ovirhõmese(...)onhagath.

His suggestion comprises three steps: l) a textual emendation which 2)

creates an otherwise unrecorded, new verb, viz. onhagía. As such a

new hopcx could be defended, since Old Frisian abounds in such words.This argument is invalidated, however, once we realize that OE

onhagi.an, according to Bosworth-Toller (1898), is an timpersonal verb'.Van Helten must have realized this also, so his next step is 3) to endowhis new onhagía with a 'personal functiont, with an appeal to MDu

behagen. The latter would just be possible, with the observation,

þowever, that MDu behagen either takes a genitival object or a

prepositional phrase with in, which is not the case in the sentence

under discussion. Holthausen (192j:s.v. onhagic) seems to have ac-cepted Van Helten's emendátion. Buma (1954t119, s.v. ovirhernese)considers Van Helten's reading to be n¿e¿ aanvaardbaar rnot accept-able', without giving his arguments. He translates the sentence as

85

m

fol.lows: 'wenn jemand gerichtlich belangt wird und sich in wiedersetz-lichkeiten gefällt' (Buma-Ebel 1963:139). It is clear that he takeshuoso to be the subject of. hagath. This solution is approved of byDietrich Hofmann (tss¡) ln his recent revision of Holthausen's diction-ary. In the Ergänzwtgsliste (at S. 37.5) he enters a hagia to 'sichgefallen in'. Again this would be unique for hagda, for I have found no

other instances of it in this function. on the contrary, in all instanceshogÍo has an inanimate subject and is accompanied by an animatedative object. Therefore, everything points against the possibility ofan intransitive hagia, as Hofmann and Buma would have it. I wouldrather suggest that a hÍm was lost in the process of copying, and read...ond [him] to ovírherneson hagath. For similar constructions in whichthe pseudo-object is separated from the predicate by the causativeobject, compare:

(37) ende her on dae onwilla misscy SR Z6 (Druk).(3S) Nawet allena tha keninga and thisse bode nogade H,

xIV, 83.

The poem Hoe dae Fresen Roem wonnen, a typical example of therMatter of Friesland'-genre, has survived in three MSS, J (c. 1530, theexemplar of which can be dated to 1464), Aysmo (c. 1500), and pBL MS362 (Gerbenzon 1965), which in all likelihood goes back to J. Thescribe of. PBL MS 362 (c. 1550) seems not to have been very competentin reading his exemplar, nor can he have been too well at home in theolder Frisian tongue as is evidenced by his recurrent misapprehensionof the text. The following lines offer a textual problem:

(39) Dae di heer al reed was, / dae vntbreek enes liawesmannes, / deer hi naet ne sach J XIXT TO-2.rWhen the army was entirely ready, (he) lacked acherished man whom he did not see'.

86

PBL MS 362 has:

(40) Dae dy (MS by) heer al reed waes (MS wats) dae

ontbreeck eenes liauwes mannes deer hy naet ne zyode(Gerbenzon 19652 31, lines 120-21).

,4ysmo, however, has:

(41) Dae dat here al rede was, / dae ontbreeck hem enen

liauwen manne, / deer hi naet saech Fres. Roem. 132,

32-3.

It seems that both J (with pBL MS 362) and Aysma are corrupt, atleast when compared to the Middle Dutch usage of ontbreken In an

impersonal construction with the meaning 'lack' (Mnl.Wb.), it governs

the dative of person and genitive of object. In J the dative objectseems to be lacking, whereas in Aysmo the causative object is

evidently non-genitive. The other instances of. vntbreka that I foundalways have a dative pseudo-subject and a genitive causative object,so that our conclusion must be that the .Aysmo-reading either containsa scribal error or features an instance of case collapse, though thelatter possibility is less likely since the genitive -s inflection, beinghighly marked, is usually the most tenacious one. As for the J-readingwe either witness a unique intransitive occurrence of the verb

vntbreka or a scribal omission of him. In my opinion the availableevidence points to the latter possibility.

Another instance of textual corruption in Aysma's version of thesame poem is the following line:

(42) Alle Romerum des mishagheden Fres. Roem. 133,20-1.

where AIIe Romerum is dat.pl., des gen.sg. of the def.art. dÍ; but

87

Rolf H. Brenimer fi.

mi.shagheden instead of the expected singular shows the plural ending.The'correct'reading is found in J:

(43) Alle Romerum dis mishagede J XIX, 126.

Here dis must be interpreted as a genitival form of the def.art. di,although it is similar in form to dis nom.sg.masc. of the dem.pron. Itcannot be analyzed as the subject of mishogede, for in that case theneuter form dit would have been used. It is possible, of course, that inthe .Aysmo passate we have an example of contraction, i.e. that theplurality of the pseudo-subject elicited a plural ending in the imper-sonal predicate, a feature not uncommon for Middle English when theimpersonal verb construction was on its way out.

The following sentence offered some difficulties to Bor:

(44) Ende ieft hy se iout wr her willa ende her on da

oenwilla misscy SR 76 (Druk).

'And if he gives her (away as a bride) against her willand harm befalls her because of her unwillingness'.

Puzzled by the fact that there is no subject in the clause introduced byende, Bor (1971:l7B-9) tried to find the solution in the prefix mis_, andcommented: rperhaps the subject, no longer recognized, is misr. Thecorrect solution was denied him because Von Richthofen (1g40) in hisdictionary gives this example as the only instance of skÍo. Thecharters, however, yield more examples of mÍsskÍo in an impersonalconstruction, e.g.:

@5) ende mischide enich menscha om den namma O n 29,65, 1450.

'and if harm should befall anyone because of that name'.(461 ist sec dat my jef myn broren ende ws fryonden mysscyt

o ll 132,5, 1486.

88

uction in Old Frisian

'If it is the case that harm should befall me or my

brothers or our friends/relatives'.

A pronominal subject is found in the following sentence:

(47) ende dan emmen hotte misschyde in tyff jeff in guet Pa

vr 30-1.

'and if any harm should befall then anyone in body or in

propertyr.

The last example clearly shows that the subject cannot be hidden in

mis-. In fact it is the semantic notion of skio 'happen' that makes itpossible for this verb to appear in an impersonal construction. This

fact is further borne out by the following example:

(48) Als da jelderen makiet een testament...dat da susteren

folschy fan da eerffscip Ro L, 21.

1f the parents make a will...that it be fully realized to

the sisters with respect to the inheritance'.

Although solutions to some problems involving the impersonal verb

construction could be offered here, it will also have appeared thatconclusive evidence for other interpretations is sometimes hard tofind. In a way this is frustrating, but then again it is a reality which

often has to be faced when tackling an Old Frisian subject. Neverthe-

less, in spite of all this, I hope that what has been brought together

here may incite future investigators to help elucidate this neglected

aspect of Old Frisian syntax.

v

I

/nst.ituut Eng els- A merikoons

K atho li eke U niv e r síte ítErosmusplein f6525 HT Nijmegen

89

Notes

I should like to thank Professor p. Gerbenzon for his kind permission toquote from his provisionat editions of ,Aysma and Roordo. Further-more, my gratitude is due to Dr Arie Bor and Dr Geart van der Meerfor prompt advice, and to the staff of the Frysk ynstitút, Groningen,for their usual hospitality and cooperation.

A recent, pertinent study of certain stylistic aspects of OldFrisian prose is Stanley 1984.

Both Günther 1880 and Jacobs 1899 abstain from syntacticalobservations.

3. Hermann 1937:122-4; Johansson (1956:43-4), from which I tookexample (2). However, on p. 44 he also allows for an imperativuspro ínfinitivo construction in North Frisian.

4. It is noteworthy to see that in the provisional card-index for thedictionary of old Frisian at the Frysk ynstitút, university ofGroningen, bruek has been arranged under the infinitive forms ofbruka. It would be the only endingless infinitive among the lot.Formally speaking, bruek is imp.sg. Moreover, the predicatepreceding ende in example (3) consists of more than one element,which is a further indication of analyzing bruek as an imperative(Hoekema 1958:18 top).

5. For Old and Middle English, most recently: Elmer l9gl; Fischerand Van der Leek 1983; Mitchell l9g5: S$l02r_jl. For MiddteDutch: Van der Horst 1985. For a variety of languages: Vonseefranz-Montag 1984. The construction is mentioned neither byVan de Velde l97la, l97lb nor by Costello 1927. Regarding Bor1971, see infra. Tiersma (19g5:l07) briefly touches upon oursubject with respect to Modern West Frisian.

90

It is interesting to see that the Low German source of this

sentence employs a genitival object (cp. Sjölin 1970:402, note

237): tDisses ne mach den dochter kinderen nicht geschehen,

dat...'.

For a discussion of infinitives with a passive meaning in Old

English, see Mitchell 19852 5937-44.

In Old Frisian, the i-mutation of all vowels (long and short)

resulted in e. In late Old Frisian e became i before nasals.

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