The lexical profile of Swedish 51
of Swedish translations but lähteä is also frequently used (sometimes together
with a more specific verb, see below) when motion is expressed by gå ’go’ or one
of the vehicle verbs in Swedish. For one rather long text, an English translation
is also included in the corpus. The most frequent English translation in addition
to go is leave, which is a verb of departure. In (23), lähteä has an implicit Source
in the same way as the verbs of departure that are used as translations in English
and Swedish. The Swedish translation ge sig iväg lit. ‘give oneself away’ is a rather
frequent phrasal verb of departure.
(23) Tyttö saisi kohta lähteä,
Snart skulle flickan få ge sig iväg,
The girl would leave soon,
Table 8. Swedish translations of Finnish lähteä
Motion Aspectual Other
Nuclear verbs Vehicle verbs Verbs of departure Inception
Swedish
gå ‘go’ 116 åka 65 ge sig av/iväg ‘leave’ 70 börja ‘begin’ 36
fara 19 bege sig 24 starta ‘start’ 7
komma 14 köra 18 lämna ‘leave’ 21
‘come’ resa 10 sticka ‘beat it’ 6
försvinna ‘disappear’ 8
fly ‘flee’ 6
Total 130 112 135 43 179
Total lähteä 599
English
go 27 drive 0 leave 29 start 1
come 6
Total 33 0 29 1 15
Total lähteä 78
Since English leave is a frequent translation, one might expect its Swedish cor-
respondent lämna ‘leave’ to be frequently used as well, but this verb has a rather
restricted use as a verb of departure. It can only be used when the Source appears
explicitly as an object as in (24).
(24) He nousivat ja läht-i-vät huonee-sta vähin äänin.
they rose and leave-past-3pl room-elat ‘silently’
De reste sig tysta och lämna-de rumm-et.
leave-past room-def.n
‘They stood up silent and left the room.’ (My transl.)