Greek to Icelandic: familiar case names do not guarantee matching verb patterns
A target object need not be accusative
Modern Greek commonly marks direct objects with the accusative and indirect objects with the genitive. Icelandic also distinguishes grammatical cases, but a target verb can require a different object form from the one suggested by a source case label. A translator should therefore preserve the participant’s role while checking the chosen Icelandic predicate, rather than treating Greek accusative as a command to select Icelandic accusative everywhere.
Rögnvaldsson contrasts Ég sé hann, I see him, with Ég hjálpa honum, I help him, and Ég sakna hans, I miss him. The relevant person is expressed through accusative, dative and genitive respectively. These target case differences are tied to the lexical constructions; they do not introduce three different people or turn every dative into a recipient of something being transferred.
The two four-case systems do not contain identical categories
The Greek description lists nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative, with dative surviving in inherited fixed expressions. The Icelandic paper discusses nominative, accusative, dative and genitive as active morphological distinctions in nouns, pronouns and adjectives. Counting four cases in both languages therefore conceals a substantial mismatch. A grammatical category ordinary in the target may not be an ordinary noun case available in the contemporary source.
This is especially relevant when the Greek source uses a genitive expression. It can contribute possession or an indirect-object relationship, while Icelandic genitive objects occur with particular verbs such as the missing example above. Do not interpret a target genitive as an ownership phrase merely because the Greek genitive often marks an owner. The relationship must be established through the actual clause, not through a shared English label for the ending.
Topicalized participants still keep their roles
Both source and target descriptions show how case marking can help identify participants when the order is unusual. Rögnvaldsson’s dog-biting example retains the same actor and affected person when the object is placed first. The Greek documentation likewise records object-first topicalization, often with an object clitic. A translator must therefore resist reading every initial noun phrase as the subject.
But recognizing that both languages permit some variation does not authorize unrestricted copying of source order. First recover the Greek event through its case and clitic cues, then build an Icelandic clause whose verb and noun forms express the same participants. If a Greek passage changes its lexical verb from seeing someone to helping them, reconsider the Icelandic complement even when the person stays the same. The target case can change for grammatical reasons without changing identity. Conversely, preserving one case form through every clause can be wrong even when it seems to maintain visual consistency. Accuracy in this direction comes from the selected predicate’s construction and the source event together, rather than a fixed translation table pairing case names.
Language references