Languages in Contrast - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2013

From a typological perspective, the verbs of sitting, standing and lying have been described relatively extensively. Against this background, the present paper provides a contrastive study of the lexical semantics of the Swedish posture verbs sitta ‘sit’, stå ‘stand’ and ligga ‘lie’ based on the Multilingual Parallel Corpus (MPC), which contains extracts from Swedish novels and their published translations into English, German, French and Finnish. Since the corpus is a very rich data source, the study is focused on the use of posture verbs as locative verbs. It turns out that it is possible to arrange the languages along a continuum with respect to the use of posture verbs versus the copula to describe the location of inanimate objects. In Finnish the copula dominates completely, in English there is more of a balance (in this kind of written text), whereas the posture verbs dominate in German and Swedish. French stands out as a completely different type in this comparison, since the copula is used very little and posture verbs hardly at all. Actually, there is a tension in French between the use of a small number of verbs with a general locative meaning as translations and the use of a large variety of reflexive verbs and resultative constructions with past participles (e.g. être fixé ‘be attached’) which convey fine-grained information about the placement. Among the languages that use posture verbs as locative predicates, there is a general similarity with respect to the factors that condition the choice between lie and stand, whereas even closely related Germanic languages differ with respect to the semantic factors that condition the choice of sit as a locative predicate.

The paper explores the applicability of a method of contrastive corpus-supported research which relies on the use of salient translation counterparts as markers of a particular meaning. The markers are identified among the Czech counterparts of the individual semantic sub-classes of English copular verbs, and subsequently used to trace other, structurally diverse, English constructions which convey the same meaning as the copulas in question (constructions expressing epistemic stance or resultative meaning). Since the repertoire of copular verbs is much narrower in Czech than in English, the translation counterparts display a variety of formally divergent means rendering into Czech the meanings conveyed by the English copulas. The overt counterparts which are closely associated with a particular semantic group of copulas, and structurally as well as semantically sufficiently unambiguous, can serve as markers. Although the method has its limitations, where practicable it may facilitate searching for function in a corpus. The material is drawn from the multilingual parallel corpus InterCorp.

In this paper we discuss ways in which the concept that, for want of a better word, we may describe as ‘overness’ is coded in motion predications in English and French. The concept of ‘overness’ is a relational one, the basic spatial sense of which involves some sort of (elongated) superiority of a Figure (a Trajector in the terminology employed by cognitive linguists) vis-à-vis a Ground. This study compares codings in English and French of this concept as it is instantiated in translations of the same original Norwegian texts. The data for the study are taken from the Oslo Multilingual Corpus. Tokens coding motion events are analysed in detail in terms of the coding of Manner, Path, Site and Ground. The results of the study point to substantial differences between English and French in their codings of motion events, with English conforming by and large to the satellite-framed language type. The results for French are much less clear, with the picture resembling more a sort of typological hybrid than a rigid path-framed type.

This paper investigates the patterns V REFL NPindef and V NPindef in an English-Norwegian contrastive perspective. Both languages have a set of verbs that may enter into both patterns, as illustrated in the title by ‘find’ and in Norwegian by finne. On the basis of material drawn from the extended fiction version of the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus, it can be established that the two languages operate differently with regard to the frequency and use of the patterns. The investigation focuses on four verbs in particular, pour, ta ‘take’, find and finne ‘find’, with the aim of establishing to what extent the two patterns exist side by side within the two languages, to what extent they are interchangeable in text, and to what extent they correspond to each other cross-linguistically. While the study reveals that they do exist side by side, a more complex picture emerges with regard to how interchangeable they are and to what extent they correspond to each other across the languages. As the patterns as such do not seem to have a uniform meaning, the verb becomes all the more important for the choice of the reflexive vs. the non-reflexive pattern. Cross-linguistically, although the patterns are seen to correspond to each other in some contexts, different preferences emerge for each pattern and verb in the two languages.

The Swedish adverb gärna, related to German gern(e), has no obvious equivalent in English. To explore this cross-linguistic phenomenon the English correspondences of gärna are examined on the basis of the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus, a bidirectional translation corpus. The study shows that gärna has a wide range of English correspondences (translations as well as sources), representing a variety of grammatical categories (verb, adjective, adverb, noun, etc). In addition, the English texts contain a large number of omissions and unidentifiable sources (zero). The most common function of gärna is to express willingness or readiness on the part of the subject, but in the absence of a volitional controller it can also indicate a habitual tendency and even convey implications such as reluctance. It is also used in speech acts expressing offers, promises and requests and in responses to such speech acts. To compare the Swedish adverb with its German cognate gern(e) a similar contrastive study of the English correspondences of this adverb was made on the basis of the Oslo Multilingual Corpus. The studies clearly demonstrate the rich multifunctionality of the two adverbs and the advantages of using bidirectional parallel corpora in contrastive research.