The lexical profile of Swedish 41
(13) En av brandbilarna åkte iväg, (LM)
One of the fire engines pulled off,
Occasionally, åka is also used with other physical objects as subject (see 14). The
motion is even in this case seen as caused by something external to the subject.
(Note the passive in the English translation.)
(14) Sedan åker dragskåpets fönster ner. (PCJ2) [lit. ‘goes ... down’]
Then the door to the hood is rolled down.
As will be discussed below, åka originally referred to driving, a completely con-
trolled action. The present-day prototypical meaning ‘travel as a passenger’ obvi-
ously developed as an extension from this more active meaning (similar to the
development of k(j)øre in Danish and Norwegian). In Swedish, the development
into a verb with a passive meaning has gone full circle. The active meaning of
driving a vehicle is lost and the meaning of passive transportation in a vehicle
has developed a productive extension where the control of the action has been
completely lost (‘end up in an unpleasant situation’).
- Swedish fara
The verb fara (see 15) can be used in Swedish as an alternative to åka in its basic
meaning but this is a less frequent alternative in present-day Swedish.
(15) Swedish – Bra, sa hon när de for över gränsen. (KE)
English ‘Good,’ she said, as they crossed the border.
Norwegian – Bra, sa hun da de kjørte over grensen.
Danish – Godt, sagde hun, da de kørte over grænsen.
Icelandic – Gott, sagði hún þegar þau óku yfir landamærin.
Dutch ‘Mooi zo,’ zei ze toen ze de grens over reden.
German “Gut”, meinte sie, als sie über die Grenze fuhren.
French – Bon, dit-elle quand ils eurent passé la frontière.
Finnish – Hyvä, nainen sanoi kun he ajoivat rajan yli.
English in this example uses a directional verb cross, which incorporates the mean-
ing of the Swedish preposition över (‘over, across’). The other Germanic languages
use the same verb as in Example (5) with åka, whereas French uses passer ‘pass’.
Finnish uses the verb ajaa, which is clearly a vehicle verb and a relatively frequent
translation also of åka.
The translations of fara as a vehicle verb are shown in Table 4. As can be
observed, the general picture is the same as for åka, except, perhaps, that drive is