44 Åke Viberg
present-day Swedish. It can be used as a vehicle verb to describe traveling as a
passenger without any evaluative overtones (possibly experienced as somewhat
more formal stylistically than åka by some native speakers) and it can be used to
describe a wide range of violent and uncontrolled motions. In the latter case, fara
tends to form phraseological units with other elements such as spatial particles.
However, with a human subject many of the phrases like fara upp ‘up’ and fara ut
‘out’ are ambiguous out of context, since they can be used also when fara refers to
motion in a vehicle in a neutral way.- The Swedish verb köra
7.1 Operating a vehicle and Travelling as a driverIn Swedish, in contrast to Norwegian and Danish, the verb köra can only be used
when the subject of the verb is a driver as in (21):
(21) Swedish Och frun kunde inte köra traktorn. (KE)
English and his wife couldn’t drive the tractor.
Norwegian Og konen hans kunne ikke kjøre traktoren.
Danish Og konen kunne ikke køre traktoren.
Icelandic Og konan gat ekki ekið traktornum.
Dutch en zijn vrouw kon geen tractor rijden.
German Und seine Frau konnte nicht Traktor fahren.
French Et sa femme ne savait pas conduire le tracteur.
Finnish Eikä vaimo osannut ajaa traktoria.
The verb drive in the English translation is a relatively close semantic equivalent
of köra. Norwegian and Danish use the cognates of köra and Icelandic uses aka,
the cognate of åka. Interestingly, Danish køre and Norwegian kjøre can cover the
obligatorily contrasting meanings of åka and köra in Swedish, whereas Icelandic
aka can cover the same two meanings. (Icelandic also has a cognate keyra of köra,
see below). French has a relatively close semantic equivalent of köra, namely con-
duire, which clearly indicates that the subject is a Driver when used in the context
where a vehicle is involved. In an example like the one in (21), åka cannot be used
in Swedish. There are, however, a restricted number of contexts where åka and
köra can be interchanged. When the operation of the vehicle is not profiled, åka
can be used even if the subject is the driver. A sentence such as Peter åkte hem
‘Peter went home (by car)’ can be used in a situation where Peter actually was driv-
ing the car since he also is a passenger. There is also an overlap in the use of köra.
A sentence such as Vi körde längs floden ‘We drove along the river (in a car)’ can