The lexical profile of Swedish 47
- based on Swedish originals, which is available from The Bank of Swedish.
(The part based on Dutch originals is not available from that source at the time of
writing.) The first 200 occurrences of each verb have been coded. Table 6 shows
the most frequent Dutch translations when åka and köra are used as vehicle verbs.
Table 6. Data based on the Swedish original texts in Dutch-Swedish Parallel Corpus
Meaning Swedish verb Dutch verbs
Travel as a passenger åka 179 gaan 69 rijden 53
Travel as a driver köra 104 rijden 77
Transport köra 36 rijden 18 brengen 13
Vehicle as subject köra 23 rijden 17
It turns out that gaan ‘go’ is somewhat more frequent as a translation of åka than
rijden, whereas rijden dominates as a translation of köra.
- A comparison of the inventories of general vehicle verbs
The vehicle verbs form a semantic (sub)field within the large field of motion verbs.
This section will sum up the major contrasts. The inventories in the languages dis-
cussed above are presented in Table 7. In addition to the verbs describing ‘travel
in a vehicle’, information has been included about verbs that have a meaning that
overlaps with or is extended into this field. For that reason, the table includes
information about the verb that is used to express the meaning ‘travel on foot
walking’ when the manner of motion is profiled.
The Continental Scandinavian languages Swedish, Norwegian and Danish use
one and the same verb gå to describe motion on foot, whether the manner is pro-
filed or not. The same applies to German gehen. In general, movement on foot is
a condition for using these verbs when the subject refers to a human. These verbs
cannot be used when the subject is travelling in a vehicle. The other Germanic
languages in principle use two different verbs, and the same applies to French and
Finnish. In languages like English, where different verbs are used, the verb profiled
for manner appears in a small box above the more general motion verb in Table 7.
(The distinction between ‘walk’ and its troponyms forms a continuum in some
languages, which means that there may be more than one verb corresponding to
English walk, but this is not indicated, since the intention is only to mark the con-
trast between a generalized ‘go’ and one or more specific alternatives.) The exten-
sion of the general motion verb go in English and its correspondents in Icelandic,
Dutch, French and Finnish is also indicated by allowing it to reach as far as Travel
in a vehicle as a passenger.