The lexical profile of Swedish 35
(The internal frequency rank order varies.) The second consists of verbs (and
set phrases with verbs) that indicate Departure as in English Peter left/set off/
departed. The third group refers to verbs that indicate a direction and usually can
be described as incorporating the meaning of a spatial particle in English (in/out/
down/up/through/via/back...). The fourth group, finally, refers to verbs describing
motion in a vehicle.
Table 2. The major translations of åka as a vehicle verb in the MPC languages
The prototypical meaning: TRAVEL IN A VEHICLE AS A PASSENGER
Translation
into
Type of motion verb used as translation
Nuclear
‘go’/‘come’Departure
‘leave’Directional Motion using
a vehicleOtherEnglish go 58 leave 17 return 1 drive 27 21
come 7 travel 4
ride 3
German gehen 3 fahren 113 18
kommen 2 reisen 2
French aller 23 partir 20 rentrer 17 conduire 1 41
venir 7 repartir 5 retourner 4 voyager 4
s’en aller 5 descendre 2 manoeuvrer 1
s’absenter 2 passer 6
Finnish mennä ‘go’ 18 lähteä 56 ajaa ‘drive’ 26 25
tulla 3 ‘leave’ matkustaa 10
‘come’ ‘travel’
Total number of occurrences of Swedish åka as a vehicle verb: 138
As can be observed, a vehicle verb is the dominant translation only in German,
where fahren accounts for 113 of the 138 translations of åka as a vehicle verb.
English drive and Finnish ajaa are also reasonably frequent as translations, but
actually some other translation is more frequent in the two languages. In English, it
is the nuclear verb go, which accounts for 58 of the 138 translations. This is clearly
a larger proportion than in French (aller 23 + 5 s’en aller) and Finnish (mennä ‘go’
18), the other two languages where ‘go’ can be used to express motion in a vehicle.
In French, the use of vehicle verbs as translations is marginal. Primarily aller ‘go’,
the departure verb partir and various directional verbs are used. In Finnish, the
verb lähteä, which can be interpreted as a departure verb (see Section 9), is the
most frequent translation. In all the languages studied in this article, there is a verb
corresponding to travel which prototypically refers to a longer trip which requires
preparation. This verb is used to a certain extent as a translation of åka (English
travel, German reisen, French voyager and Finnish matkustaa). In addition to the