Katie Sickles LING 567 Lab2 Icelandic, Íslenska Language Code: isl Pronouns: Pronouns in Icelandic vary by person, number, gender, case and familiarity. I have a chart below representing the pronouns of the language. I have given all the cases for 1st person, and used just the nominative case for the other persons. 1st Person: Singular Familiar Pl. Polite Pl. nom. ég við vér acc. mig okkur oss dat. mér okkur oss gen. mín okkar vor 2nd Person: nom. þú þið þér 3rd Person (nominative only): Singular Plural masc. hann þeir fem. hún þær neut. það þau These pronouns have to match the verbs in agreement with the number and person. Such as the example below: Ég hoppa I jump.1sg *Við hoppa We jump.1sg Determiners: Icelandic does not have a indefinite article, only the definite one. There are two different kinds of the definite article: a free one, and a suffixed one. Free: hinn gódi maður the good man Suffixed: gódi maður-inn the good man The free aricle can only appear if there is an adjective in the sentence. If there is no adjective present, the suffixed version has to be used: Maðurinn elskar mig the man loves me *Hinn maður elskar mig the man loves me The articles also have agreement with case, gender and number. This is true of both free and suffixed articles. The chart below illustrates some of the different suffixed articles: Gender Singular Plural nom. masc. hestur-inn hestar-nir acc. masc. hest-inn hesta-na dat. masc. hesti-num hestu-num nom. fem. kinn-in kinnar-nar acc. fem. kinn-ina kinnar-nar dat. fem. kinn-inni kinnu-num If there is a common noun without a determiner, it has the same interpretation as the indefinite article of "a" from English. Case: Icelandic has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. The nominative case is generally used for the subject of a sentence as in English and accusative is used as the object of transitive verbs. There are also some verbs that require the subject to be accusative as well. Here are some examples: Ég elska manninn I.NOM like the man.ACC *Ég líka maðurinn I.NOM like the man.NOM Mig dreymdi draum I.ACC dreamt a dream.ACC The dative case is most often used in indirect objects, but there are verbs that have the direct object as dative. Genitive case is mostly used in possesives, but is also used in measurement. The cases in Icelandic have these distributions and must remain in the proper distribution to form grammatical sentences. Agreement: There is very strong agreement in Icelandic. So far it has been used in almost all of the categories above. Gender, number, and person have to agree for determiners and their nouns. Number and person have to agree for verbs and their pronouns or nouns. Maðurinn elskar mig the man loves me *Maðurin elskar mig the.FEM man.MASC loves me Adjectives: Unlike English, the adjectives in Icelandic have case and number. These also have to follow agreement with their nouns. They also appear right before the noun they are modifying. The chart shows some of the strong forms of the adjective "fagur"-beautiful, fair. Singular Masc. Fem. Neut. nom. fagur fögur fagurt acc. fagran fagra fagurt Plural Masc. Fem. Neut. nom. fagrir fagrar fögur acc. fagra fagrar fögur These strong forms are used mostly with indeterminate nouns. However, there are also weak forms that are used with definite article. For example: rauðer hunder a red dog rauði hunderinn the red dog *hinn rauðer hunder the red.STONG dog Coordination: The coordinating conjuction, "and", in Icelandic is used much in the same way as the English "and". The word "og" is inserted between to sentences or NPs to connect them: hunder og köttur dog and cat Kötturinn elskar hundinn og hunderinn elskar köttinn The cat loves the dog and the dog loves the cat Word Order: Icelandic is a SVO language. The verb will almost always be the second idea of the sentence. The exception to this is in yes/no question (which will be discussed later). If the sentence contains an auxiliary verb, this verb is placed before the main verb. Konan elskar hann The woman loves him Konan hann elskar *The woman him loves Konan getur hoppa The woman can jump Negation: To negate the sentence in Icelandic, the verb is negatated with a negative adverb "ekki". This adverb is added after the auxiliary verb if an auxiliary is present. If not, it is put after the main verb unless the object is a pronoun in which case, the adverb is added after the pronoun object. Ég get ekki hoppa I can't jump Ég hoppa ekki I don't jump Ég elska hann ekki I don't love him Yes/no Questions: To ask a yes/no question in Icelandic, the word order is changed. The new order is VSO for these types of questions. All other contrainsts, such as case agreement must still be followed to create a grammatical sentence. Borðar þú matinn? Eat you food? Do you eat food? *þú borðar matinn? you eat food? Imperatives: There is a special imperative tense in Icelandic that is used in command sentences. In its usage, unlike English, the pronoun is often not dropped of (ie "come you!"). Below is the imperative conjugation for "jump" þú hoppa við hoppum þið hoppið Hoppa! Jump Hoppa þú! Jump (you)! When negation is used, it is possible to use the infinival form instead of the imperative. Ekki að hoppar! Don't jump! Modals: The modals are auxiliry verbs in Icelandic. The are placed befor the main verb in standard sentence order. In a matrix yes/no question, they are placed at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the subject. Below is the conjugation of "can": ég get þú getur hann getur við getum þið getið þeir geta Hann getur hoppa He can jump Getur hann hoppa? Can he jump? Final Note: In this write-up, I am still in the process of learning the grammar of Icelandic. There many times when writing this and the testsuite I thought a sentence was grammatical and later found out it was not. I am pretty sure that what I have represented now has the correct grammatical judgements, but as I am not a native speaker, I have yet to do more research to guarantee that the judgements are correct.