252 Jennifer Herriman
According to Bäckström (2004: 99), English is a more subject-prominent language
than Swedish and is therefore less restrictive when it comes to assigning subject
status to inanimate semantic roles. Swedish, on the other hand, tends to prioritise
animate semantic roles as subjects (Teleman et al. 1999: 65).
Thirdly, English is more tolerant of a greater informational load in the subject.
For instance, as Downing and Locke (2006: 228) have observed, it may represent
discourse-new information when it occurs with an intransitive or copular verb.
Swedish, in contrast, tends to follow the information principle more strictly and
to avoid new information in the Theme. This is illustrated in (42) and (43), where
simple clauses with the subjects a failure and an important step in our understand-
ing, respectively, correspond to extrapositions in Swedish.
(42) Det är ju t ex så, att konsumenterna är mera bortskämda, anställda accepterar
inte längre att bli behandlade som kugghjul och konkurrenterna är mera på
alerten. Och allting är mera officiellt idag. Kanske var det även förr lika svårt
att förutsäga och att göra konsekvensbedömningar. Det var bara det att ett
misslyckande i detta avseende inte syntes lika tydligt då. (BB1)
‘It was only that that a failure ...’
It is true, for instance, that consumers are more demanding, employees no
longer accept being treated like cogs, and competitors are more alert. And we
have to take all this into consideration when we make a business move – much
more than before. And everything is more public today. Perhaps it was equally
difficult to forecast and to make assessment of consequences even in the old
days. Maybe a failure was not as obvious then. (BB1T)
(43) Although there are uncountable millions of individual organisms all growing
and changing, their traits in common allow us to group them and recognize
that they belong to species such as peacocks, dogs, or wheat. About ten mil-
lion species are estimated to exist. When any individual fails to get energy and
food, fails to act to maintain its identity, we realize it is moribund or dead. An
important step in our understanding is to recognize the significance of collec-
tions of living things. (JL1)
Trots att det finns oräkneliga miljoner enskilda organismer som alla växer och
förändrar sig, har de gemensamma egenskaper som tillåter oss att gruppera
dem och känna igen dem som olika arter, till exempel påfåglar, hundar eller
vete. Man har uppskattat antalet arter till omkring tio miljoner. När en individ
inte längre kan ta upp energi eller näring och misslyckas med att uppehålla
sin identitet, uppfattar vi den som döende eller död. Det är också viktigt att
förstå att levande väsen samarbetar i grupper. (JL1T)
‘It is also important to understand that...’