The lexical profile of Swedish 37
marked with respect to manner, it tends to indicate that the manner of motion is
unknown or unconventional in some sense: Tjuvarna måsta ha tagit sig in genom
köksfönstret ‘The thieves must have entered (lit. taken themselves inside) via the
kitchen window’ (Viberg 2010). It is not possible to describe these uses in detail in
this paper, but these examples point to interesting on-going changes. Example (6)
also shows how Icelandic fara can be used to refer to motion in a vehicle (cf.
Example 4, where it refers to motion on foot). It should be noted that even the
Icelandic verb keyra (the cognate of köra) is used as a translation of Swedish åka.
5.2 Åka as a verb of departure
As pointed out in Section 2.2, the verbs of Arrival and Departure focus on the
reaching of a Goal or the leaving of a place serving as Source. Typically, the focused
place can be left implicit: Peter arrived. Peter left. In addition to verbs of Arrival
and Departure, whose basic meaning belong to this field, there are verbs with
other basic meanings, which can be used as (extended into the field of ) Arrival
and Departure verbs. One such verb is åka, which is used as a verb of Departure in
(7), where there is no overt spatial complement but only an implicit place (Origo)
which must be inferred from context.
(7) Swedish Hon kunde inte höra ljudet av Olas bil men han måste ha åkt.
(KE)
English She couldn’t hear the sound of Ola’s car, but he must have gone.
Norwegian Hun kunne ikke høre lyden av Olas bil, men han måtte ha kjørt.
Danish Hun kunne ikke høre lyden af Olas bil, men han måtte være kørt.
Icelandic Hún heyrði ekki í bíl Ola en hann hlaut að vera farinn af stað.
Dutch Ze kon het geluid van Ola’s auto niet horen, maar hij moest
weggereden zijn.
German Sie konnte das Geräusch von Olas Auto nicht hören, er mußte
jedoch gefahren sein.
French Elle n’avait pas entendu le bruit de la voiture d’Ola mais il avait
dû partir.
Finnish Hän ei kuullut Olan auton hurinaa mutta kai hän oli jo lähtenyt.
In each language, there are several ways to translate åka as a verb of departure,
only one of which is exemplified in (7), but together the translations give a picture
of the structural options. (See also the translations in the column Departure in
Table 2.) In the Germanic languages, one of the simple verbs of motion that are
regularly used as a translation of åka is used without any spatial complement to
signal departure. Sometimes a special (separable) particle (Dutch weg-) or general-
ized PP (Icelandic af stað ‘from place’) is added, and this is a structural option that