The extraposition of clausal subjects in English and Swedish
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Jennifer Herriman
Abstract
This study compares the extraposition of subject clauses in two samples of English and Swedish original texts and their translations from the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus. It finds a more frequent usage of extrapositions in the Swedish sample. This is due to formal, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic differences between the two languages (e.g. the existence of a gerund -ing form in English but not in Swedish, the V2 constraint in Swedish, and the greater semantic scope and tolerance of new information in English subjects), all of which make it possible for more information to be placed in preverbal position in English than in Swedish. The study also finds that subject clauses are more frequent in general in the Swedish sample, both when they are extraposed and when they are retained in preverbal position. This appears to be due to a greater tendency for process meanings to be nominalised in English.
Abstract
This study compares the extraposition of subject clauses in two samples of English and Swedish original texts and their translations from the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus. It finds a more frequent usage of extrapositions in the Swedish sample. This is due to formal, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic differences between the two languages (e.g. the existence of a gerund -ing form in English but not in Swedish, the V2 constraint in Swedish, and the greater semantic scope and tolerance of new information in English subjects), all of which make it possible for more information to be placed in preverbal position in English than in Swedish. The study also finds that subject clauses are more frequent in general in the Swedish sample, both when they are extraposed and when they are retained in preverbal position. This appears to be due to a greater tendency for process meanings to be nominalised in English.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- In memory of Stig Johansson v
- Table of contents vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- Tertia comparationis in multilingual corpora 7
- Seeing the lexical profile of Swedish through multilingual corpora 25
- A corpus-based analysis of English affixal negation translated into Spanish 57
- English adverbs of essence and their equivalents in Dutch and French 83
- A parallel corpus approach to investigating semantic change 103
- Youngspeak 127
- Quantity approximation in English and French business news reporting 139
- Enriching the phraseological coverage of high-frequency adverbs in English-French bilingual dictionaries 157
- Using recurrent word-combinations to explore cross-linguistic differences 177
- Cohesive substitution in English and German 201
- The extraposition of clausal subjects in English and Swedish 233
- Thematic variation in English and Spanish newspaper genres 261
- Author index 287
- Subject index 291
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- In memory of Stig Johansson v
- Table of contents vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- Tertia comparationis in multilingual corpora 7
- Seeing the lexical profile of Swedish through multilingual corpora 25
- A corpus-based analysis of English affixal negation translated into Spanish 57
- English adverbs of essence and their equivalents in Dutch and French 83
- A parallel corpus approach to investigating semantic change 103
- Youngspeak 127
- Quantity approximation in English and French business news reporting 139
- Enriching the phraseological coverage of high-frequency adverbs in English-French bilingual dictionaries 157
- Using recurrent word-combinations to explore cross-linguistic differences 177
- Cohesive substitution in English and German 201
- The extraposition of clausal subjects in English and Swedish 233
- Thematic variation in English and Spanish newspaper genres 261
- Author index 287
- Subject index 291
