42 Åke Viberg
as frequent as go as an English translation and ajaa is actually more frequent than
lähteä in Finnish. But the frequencies are so low that this could be a coincidence.
(Since only the major translations are shown, the frequencies do not add up to 49
in the individual languages.)Table 4. The major translations of fara as a vehicle verb in the MPC languages
The prototypical meaning: TRAVEL IN A VEHICLE AS A PASSENGER
Translation
intoType of motion verb used as translation
Nuclear
‘go’/‘come’Departure
‘leave’Directional Motion using a
vehicle
English go 14 leave 3 return 1 drive 14
come 1 cross 2 travel 7
ride 1
German gehen 0 fahren 39
kommen 0 reisen 2
French aller 0 partir 9 rentrer 1 conduire 0
venir 0 s’en aller 0 retourner 3 voyager 1
descendre 2
passer 1
Finnish mennä 3 lähteä 6 ajaa 17
tulla 1 matkustaa 6
Total number of occurrences of Swedish fara as a vehicle verb: 49The meaning potential of fara in present-day Swedish will not be treated system-
atically in this paper since fara has a rather complex pattern of senses which fall
outside the semantic field of vehicle verbs, but the following characterization is
based on an ongoing study of Swedish corpora. The range of expressions is much
greater than for åka, so it will not be possible to cover all the uses in any detail,
but it is interesting to see that there is a very strong general pattern that is shared
by most of the expressions where fara is not used as a vehicle verb. Its meaning
potential is characteristic of a once-frequent verb, which is losing its more general
meaning leaving islands, as it were, of specialized meanings which are still related
to some degree but do not always form a contiguous chain (see Family 2011 for
the island metaphor).
The most frequent meaning is ‘travel in a vehicle (as a passenger)’, but this
meaning is not as dominant as it is with åka. As a vehicle verb, fara is used with
a human subject and describes the motion in a neutral way. In most of its other
uses, both as a concrete motion verb and as an abstract (or metaphorical) motion
verb referring to mental and emotional processes of various types, it is associated
with uncontrolled and/or violent actions and events. Actually, fara can be used