Advances in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics - Studies in honour of Stig Johansson

248 Jennifer Herriman

Table 7. English noncongruent correspondences to extrapositions

in the Swedish^ sample^6

Swedish

extrapositions

English noncongruent correspondences

External Internal Nominal Zero Free^6 Total

Att-clauses 13 36 2 10 2 63

Infinitive clause 2 40 14 5 12 73

Total 15 76 14 15 14 136

Table 8. Swedish noncongruent correspondences to extrapositions

in the English sample^7

English

extrapositions

Swedish noncongruent correspondences

External Internal Nominal Zero Free^7 Total

That-clauses 8 11 1 0 6 26

Infinitive clause 8 25 0 0 3 36

Total 16 36 1 0 9 62

There are some differences in the distribution of the noncongruent correspon-

dences in each sample. Firstly, in the English sample, there are twice as many

noncongruent correspondences that are simple clauses with internal evaluations

(76 vs. 36). There are also more nominals expressing the informational content

(16 vs. only one in the Swedish sample). Many of these are -ing forms of the type

which are traditionally referred to as gerunds (Quirk et al. 1985: 1291). These cor-

respond to an extraposed infinitival clause in Swedish, as in (32).

(32) Ofta är det svårt att hitta rätt i statsförvaltningen. (GAPG1)

‘Often is it difficult to find right in public administration’

Finding your way through the public administration maze can be quite difficult.

(GAPG1T)

There are, finally, a number of zero correspondences (15 altogether) in the English

sample, but none in the Swedish sample. These all correspond to Swedish extrapo-

sitions which have verbs of existence or appearance, such as hända ‘happen’ vara

så ‘be thus’, which are used to carry out what Kaltenböck (2005: 145) describes as

a filler function for introducing new information, as in (33) and (34).

6. These include 15 Swedish extrapositions which have not been translated at all.


7. These include four English extrapositions which have not been translated at all.