Breakdown of Fornbíllinn á það til að drepast.
það
it / there (existential) / the one (n)
að
to (infinitive marker)
til
to
fornbíllinn
the vintage car
Questions & Answers about Fornbíllinn á það til að drepast.
Why does á það til að mean 'tends to', and what is the role of það?
The phrase eiga það til að is a fixed idiom for expressing a tendency or habit. Literally, it means 'to own/have it to [do something]'. The það is a grammatical placeholder that points forward to the infinitive phrase að drepast.
I know drepa means 'to kill'. Why does it mean 'stall' here, and what does the -st ending do?
Adding the middle voice suffix -st to drepa changes the meaning from 'to kill' to 'to die' or 'perish'. When talking about a car, engine, or even a fire, að drepast is the standard, natural way to say that it 'dies' or 'stalls'.
Does eiga það til að imply the car stalls all the time, or just occasionally?
It implies an occasional, sometimes unpredictable habit. It means the car has a tendency to stall every now and then, rather than it being completely broken and stalling continuously.
If I wanted to say the car 'tended to stall' in the past tense, which part of the sentence changes?
Only the main verb eiga changes. You would use the past tense átti, making the sentence Fornbíllinn átti það til að drepast. The rest of the idiom, including the infinitive að drepast, stays exactly the same.