Breakdown of Hún var svefnlaus út af barninu.
vera
to be
hún
she
barnið
the child
út af
because of (+ dative)
svefnlaus
sleepless
Questions & Answers about Hún var svefnlaus út af barninu.
How does the suffix -laus work in svefnlaus, and does it change depending on who is sleepless?
The suffix -laus works just like the English "-less", attaching to a noun (here, svefn for sleep) to mean "without". Because it turns the word into an adjective, it must agree with the subject. The base form is laus for both masculine and feminine singular, so it stays svefnlaus for Hún. If the subject were a neuter noun, it would change to svefnlaust.
Could I use the verb "to sleep" (sofa) with -laus instead of the noun?
No, the suffix -laus almost always attaches to a noun rather than a verb root. To say "sleepless", you must use the noun for sleep, which is svefn, giving us svefnlaus.
Why is út af used here to mean "because of" instead of vegna?
Both út af and vegna mean "because of", but út af is much more common in everyday spoken Icelandic. The word vegna sounds a bit more formal and is more frequent in written text.
Why is the word for "the baby" in the dative case (barninu)?
The compound preposition út af always forces the following noun into the dative case. The base neuter noun barn becomes barni in the dative, and adding the neuter dative definite article -nu gives us barninu (the baby).
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