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Exploring spontaneous-event marking though parallel corpora: Translating English ergative intransitive constructions into Norwegian and Swedish

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Author

Summary, in English

English ergative verbs in one-participant constructions such as ‘The door opens’ often correspond to reflexive verbs or -S forms in Norwegian and Swedish. Following Kemmer (1993) such constructions profile spontaneous event meaning and belong to the middle domain. This study uses corpus methodology to explore spontaneous-event marking in Norwegian and Swedish from the point of view of Kemmer’s suggested two-cycle development path for middle marking in the Scandinavian languages. The results suggest that there are differences in the middle systems in the Scandinavian languages to the effect that Norwegian has completed Kemmer’s two cycles, whereas Swedish has not. Further, there is tentative indication that ergative verbs are on the increase in both Norwegian and Swedish for certain Subjects and in discipline-specific contexts, possibly due to influence from English.

Department/s

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

230-250

Publication/Series

Languages in Contrast

Volume

15

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Keywords

  • contrastive linguistics
  • corpus-based approach
  • ergative alteration
  • ergative verbs
  • parallel corpora
  • spontaneous-event marking
  • the middle voice
  • English/Norwegian/Swedish

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1387-6759