The impersonal verb in Old Icelandic

5.
thesis, then.. But seeing this was a doctoral thesi s of
218 pages, and American scholarship of this nature has the
reputation for being thorough, the passive was excluded from
the study.. So the topic of this thesis became the impersonal
alone. This meant five headings instead of six, sinc e the
sixth one was the passive.
However, this classification proved to be equivocal; some
might not agree on the most idiomatic English translation for
a particular phrase, and some of the impersonal exar~les could
in this system belong to more than one category. A cut-anddried,
unequivocal foundation to the arguments here now seemed
best, since it was necessary to direct the attention of the
readers of this chiefly to the comments on the translation, not
to divert it wi th a subjective classification of the Icelandic.
Thesecomrnents contained the author' sreflections on the topic
of the two languages comJ?ared, livhich were his chief interest
in this field and were closely bound up with form. So a
return to the original plan of a purely formal classification
of all the impersonal examples was necessary, one according to
the Icelandic form of the phrase, but thi s time appealing to
English translation as well, and one that was fOl~ally
demonstrable and ob j ecii ve.
This reclassification of impersonal types was done
according as they appeared combined wi th other grannnatical
phenomena appearing most equently th the impersonal.. The