The lexical profile of Swedish 45
be used even if only one person in the group to which the speaker belongs is driv-
ing. Such examples represent bridging contexts which may serve as the first step
in extensions of the basic meaning, but, in principle, there is an obligatory lexical
contrast in Swedish between travelling as a passenger (åka, fara) and operating a
car and travelling as a driver (köra).
7.2 Transportation of passenger and goods
The verb köra can also be used with an object indicating passengers or goods that
are being transported. This is an example of object-centered motion, where the
dislocation of the object is profiled even if the subject is also moving under normal
circumstances. (Köra can in principle be used even when a vehicle is operated
with a remote control.) In this use, there are several alternatives to köra, some of
which are sensitive to the distinction between passengers and goods. Köra can be
used with both types of object but only the first alternative is shown here in (22).
(22) Swedish Vet du nån som kan köra oss ditopp? (KE)
English Do you know anyone who could take us there by car?’
Norwegian Vet du om noen som kan kjøre oss opp dit?
Danish Kender du nogen, der kan køre os derop?
Icelandic Veistu um nokkurn sem getur ekið okkur þangað uppeftir?
Dutch Weet u iemand die ons naar boven kan rijden?’
German Wissen Sie jemanden, der uns da rauffahren könnte?”
French Vous connaissez quelqu’un qui pourrait nous y conduire?
Finnish Mahtaisiko joku voida ajaa meidät sinne?
The same equivalents of köra as in (21) are found in the Germanic languages except
for English, where take is often used as an alternative to drive to express transpor-
tation. In this particular example, the vehicle is explicitly indicated in the English
translation. French and Finnish also use the same verb as in (21). In addition to
the verbs that are the closest correspondents to Swedish köra ‘drive’, there are also
a number of general transportation verbs in the MPC languages, but a general
account of transportation verbs falls outside the scope of this paper. Only verbs
that can also be used to profile the operation of a vehicle are treated systematically.
7.3 Translations of Swedish köra as a vehicle verb
The major translations of köra as a vehicle verb are shown in Table 5. The Total col-
umn shows the total number of occurrences of köra in the corpus including uses
where köra is not a vehicle verb. The following three columns show the various