# Icelandic: IP-V2, SVO word order in clauses joined by "og"



## Chris Corbyn

In a sentence where "and" (og) joins two actions, does the introduction of "og" force the subject in the second clause to come after the verb, or not?

I _went_ to the shops and I _bought_ a book.
Ég _fór_ í búðirnar og ég _keypti_ bók.

or

I _went_ to the shops and _bought_ I a book?
Ég fór í búðirnar og _keypti_ ég bók.

I think it's the first one since the "and" by itself doesn't constitute and idea, but I'm not 100%.

EDIT | Never mind, I'm being dumb.  The two clauses are independent and are "I went to the shops" and "I bought a book".  The "and" isn't playing any role in the word order since it's just a conjunction.  Therefore the first sentence is the correct one (at least in terms of word order...).


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## Tjahzi

Your final analysis is correct.  

(Additionally, one could add that there is no need to repeat the pronoun, as in English (and most other languages).)


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## Alxmrphi

Just if you're interested: We had a discussion about IP-V2 in Icelandic not _that_ long ago.
But essentially yes, conjunctions don't trigger V2 in a coordinate clause, if you have an adverbial fronted, then it'd work as normal.

*[**[*_*Í gær*_*]*_ keypti ég bók_*]*_ *og*_* [**[*_*á** morgun*_*] *_keyptirðu__ blýant_*]*...
*[**[*_*yesterday*_*]*_ bought I book_*]*_ *og*_* [**[*_*this morning*_*] *_bought-you pencil_*]*...

"_Yesteday I book a book and this morning you bought a pencil_".

But I don't think Icelandic uses *shops* in the plural like we do in English.
Hopefully we can get a confirmation about that.


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## Chris Corbyn

Takk fyrir, krakkar, ég skil það nú


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## Tjahzi

Well, syntactically, a conjunction works more or less like a punctuation mark and hence, the two sentences should be considered as separated. That means it is correct to say _Ég kaupi bók og á morgun kaupir þú blýant, _with normal word order in the first part and V2 in the second.

Regarding plural or singular of shops, I'm very confident that unless you buy stuff in more than one shop, you went to _the_ shop. 

Also, I'd be very surprised if _þakka_ didn't govern dative.


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## Alxmrphi

Tjahzi said:


> Well, syntactically, a conjunction works more or less like a punctuation mark and hence, the two sentences should be considered as separated. That means it is correct to say _Ég kaupi bók og á morgun* kaupir þú* blýant, _with normal word order in the first part and V2 in the second.



You'd need the past tense in the second part of the sentence (only saying it in case it confuses the other learners that we have here now with us ).
It's *á morgun* (_this morning_ -> past) not *í morgun* (_tomorrow morning_ -> future)



> Regarding plural or singular of shops, I'm very confident that unless you buy stuff in more than one shops, you went to _the_ shop.


In English it's very often plural, even if you only go to one shop. I wasn't sure if you were specifically talking about Icelandic though. If so, forgive my comment!



> Also, I'd be very surprised if _þakka_ didn't govern dative.


Eh? I don't know what you're referring to .


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## Tjahzi

Alxmrphi said:


> It's *á morgun* (_this morning_ -> past) not *í morgun* (_tomorrow morning_ -> future)


 Ehm, are you really sure that is really so? 



Alxmrphi said:


> In English it's very often plural, even if you only go to one shop. I wasn't sure if you were specifically talking about Icelandic though. If so, forgive my comment!


 Indeed I was. My bad.



Alxmrphi said:


> Eh? I don't know what you're referring to .


 It was a reference to the nominative plural form of _krakki_. Analyzing the phrase semantically, we find that Chris (nom.) sends/gives
thanks (acc.) to us/guys (dat.). So, it should be _krökkum_? That said, this is the kind of phrase of which standard grammar tends to lose its grip of quite easily.


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## Chris Corbyn

Tjahzi said:


> It was a reference to the nominative plural form of _krakki_. Analyzing the phrase semantically, we find that Chris (nom.) sends/gives
> thanks (acc.) to us/guys (dat.). So, it should be _krökkum_? That said, this is the kind of phrase of which standard grammar tends to lose its grip of quite easily.



  A quick google suggests standard use is to say Takk krakkar!

With regards to á morgun vs. í morgun, my understanding is the á morgun (future) is tomorrow morning, whereas í morgun would be "this morning".  But what do I know?


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## Alxmrphi

Ahh I mixed it up, woops.
I actually looked in the dictionary for confirmation as well, I must not have been concentrating.

As for Takk, I was under the impression you can use the nominative as well.
After all, it's not the verb _þakka_, it's the exclamatory '_takk_'. Putting it into a different case (i.e. accusative after 'fyrir') would be a different meaning entirely.

Takk fyrir krakka = Thanks for (the) boys.
Takk fyrir, krakkar = Thanks, guys.

That's how I see it anyway.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Tjahzi said:


> It was a reference to the nominative plural form of _krakki_. Analyzing the phrase semantically, we find that Chris (nom.) sends/gives
> thanks (acc.) to us/guys (dat.). So, it should be _krökkum_? That said, this is the kind of phrase of which standard grammar tends to lose its grip of quite easily.



No. 'Takk' isn't a verb, it's just an interjection; since Icelandic does not have a vocative case, the people you're addressing stay in the nominative, just as they would if you were just saying their names to get their attention or something. If he wanted to be more formal he could say 'Þakka *ykkur* fyrir, krakkar', but it still wouldn't be _krökkum_.


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## Silver_Biscuit

Alxmrphi said:


> Ahh I mixed it up, woops.
> I actually looked in the dictionary for confirmation as well, I must not have been concentrating.
> 
> As for Takk, I was under the impression you can use the nominative as well.
> After all, it's not the verb _þakka_, it's the exclamatory '_takk_'. Putting it into a different case (i.e. accusative after 'fyrir') would be a different meaning entirely.
> 
> Takk fyrir krakka = Thanks for (the) boys.
> Takk fyrir, krakkar = Thanks, guys.
> 
> That's how I see it anyway.



Einmitt  Ég er sammála.
Edit: Except that krakki means kid, not boy.


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## sindridah

Even though it's Icelandic, It seems like Chinese for me


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## Tjahzi

I just happen to know the _á morgun/í morgun_ distinction since it's such an extreme false friend for Swedes, with _imorgon_ meaning _tomorrow_ and _på morgonen_ meaning _in the morning._ (I take it you agree with how I put it?)

Well, fair enough. What I meant with "the kind of phrase of which standard grammar tends to lose its grip of quite easily" was that even though this construction once started out as a "A gives thanks to B", the former accusative object has become an interjection, which could be said to function as a modal particle. (A major argument for the _A gives thanks to B-theory_ is that for almost all of the languages that use this construction, the interjection(/modal particle) is the plural form of the noun _thank_.) Similarly, _takk fyrir_ should originate from this construction as well (_A gives B thanks __for C_), where the recipient is indicated through context (and in case it needs to be stressed, one can indeed use the vocative (->nominative) case). 

Oh well, I'm not in any way challenging your view, I do agree with it. I just have a slightly different perspective which makes this discussion, that seems meaningless to you, somewhat interesting for me.

For the record, is it correct to translate _krakkar_ to _guys_? Or was Chris pointing out our inferior age by using it?


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## Alxmrphi

> Well, fair enough. What I meant with "the kind of phrase of which  standard grammar tends to lose its grip of quite easily" was that even  though this construction once started out as a "A gives thanks to B",  the former accusative object has become an interjection, which could be  said to function as a modal particle. (A major argument for the _A gives thanks to B-theory_  is that for almost all of the languages that use this construction, the  interjection(/modal particle) is the plural form of the noun _thank_.) Similarly, _takk fyrir_ should originate from this construction as well (_A gives B thanks __for C_),  where the recipient is indicated through context (and in case it needs  to be stressed, one can indeed use the vocative (->nominative) case).


But *takk *is a Danish loan, which underwent the change from fricative -> plosive and adopted during the period when Denmark ruled Iceland.
It's not a derived form of* þakka*.

I posted more about it in #7 here:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1798511

Re: *krakkar*, I just assumed that's what he meant  
Maybe it's not the best translation, I think *strákar *would be better.


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## sindridah

Yes maybe it is but I think kids would be best translation ! Just trying to be helpful in a subject that I'm able to 

Krakkar as guys or strákar is wierd and no one use that. Krakkar is used referring to kids.

And why is he choosing prural for the shops? ( búðirnar ) Why not just: Ég fór í búð og keypti bók? That sounds best for me


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## Alxmrphi

> And why is he choosing prural for the shops? ( búðirnar ) Why not just: Ég fór í búð og keypti bók? That sounds best for me


In English we use the plural, so it was just a translation from English but where Icelandic uses the singular, an easy mistake to make 
So how would you translate 'guys' then, Sindri?


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## sindridah

Gaurar, strákar, drengir , kauðar , bændur ( Not formal though, slang ) and so on...


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## Alxmrphi

Haha really? _Farmers_ (bændur) ?


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## Tjahzi

Interesting! That makes even more sense to me p) since I didn't expect Icelandic to so easily transform their syntactic construction! (That is, it was "just" reduced to _takk fyrir_.)  
However, wouldn't you say the point still stands, considering they are obviously cognates and the construction must have existed in Old Norse?

Indeed, so did I.


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## Alxmrphi

> However, wouldn't you say the point still stands, considering they are  obviously cognates and the construction must have existed in Old Norse?



Yeah 
Things just went at superspeed in Scandinavia, seeing how divergent those languages are from Old Norse now. So it must happened at some point. But I think once it just becomes an interjection there's no consideration for case or related issues.


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## Tjahzi

Well, considering all Germanic languages had all four cases and three genders at 1000 AD, it's interesting to compare their developments. English was the first to lose all of it. Swedish and Danish lost cases but partially retained genders. Dutch and Norwegian also lost cases, but kept all three genders while Icelandic/Faroese and German kept the system intact (while at the same time being very syntactically and phonologically different from each other). Now that's interesting. 

For the record, the main reason we have diverged so much is borrowings. It's estimated that up to 60% of the vocabulary of standard Swedish has been borrowed from German.

Also, sorry for hijacking the thread.


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## hanne

<The original question has been answered, and the rest of the thread has lost focus, so this thread has now been closed.>


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